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Peace will elude West Asia as long as Israel remains an ethnic-supremacist state, says Iranian expert
View(s):Regarded as the voice of Iran in the hostile Western media, Professor Syed Mohammad Marandi, who was a member of President Ebrahim Raisi’s delegation to Sri Lanka, says West Asia will not see peace unless and until Israel abandons its policies of racial hierarchy, ethnic supremacism, and apartheid.
In a wide-ranging interview with Ameen Izzadeen of the Sunday Times, Prof. Marandi, an expert in Orientalism, says the United States’ international clout is on the decline and any more sanctions on Iran will have little or no impact on the Islamic Republic. He also says Iran’s nuclear assets are well insulated against any external attacks.
Prof. Marandi: BRICS will bring together Global South countries to enhance economic cooperation with one another, independent of Western financial institutions and independent from Western pressure. Pic by Akila Jayawardena
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: The West Asian region is embroiled in an unprecedented crisis after the October 7 events. Then came Israel’s April 1 attack on the Iranian embassy’s consular section in Damascus, and Iran’s April 14 response in the form of drone and missile attacks on Israeli military bases. This was followed by Israel’s Isfahan attack, which Iran claims it successfully neutralised. Given this escalation and calls for calm by peace-loving people, what are the measures Iran is taking to prevent the crisis from deteriorating into a major regional war, which can spell disaster for countries like Sri Lanka, which is struggling to come out of its worst economic crisis?
Iran is very keen on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Since the conflict began, Iran has been calling for an immediate ceasefire. Unfortunately, Western allies of the Israeli regime are backing Israel’s attack on Gaza. So I think the Iranian position is in line with the position of our peace-loving friends in Sri Lanka. Ultimately, for us to have real peace and permanent peace in West Asia, the concepts of racial hierarchy, ethnic supremacism, and apartheid have to be set aside. The Israeli regime pursues ethnic cleansing. It continues to kill the Gazans. The killings of the Gazans didn’t begin after October 7. We know that this has been going on for decades, and October 7 was a response from the Gazan people, who were subjugated for decades. But as long as we have this situation, I think peace will elude us.
The South African model for Iran is the ideal one. The white supremacist regime there ultimately collapsed, and we have a multicultural society in South Africa. Of course, South Africa has many problems like all other countries, but at least when it comes to racial supremacy, it is no longer a country that tolerates that sort of ideology. So the Israeli regime has to put aside the ideology of Zionism, where one set of people has exclusive rights to the land while the people who actually lived there for centuries are ignored and their rights are taken away from them and given to people from Europe who they consider to be superior. That cannot continue.
Q: Considering the attack on Isfahan, a city that houses several nuclear facilities like the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and air bases, how safe are Iran’s nuclear assets? Is Iran capable of repelling an attack by Israel or any of its Western allies on its nuclear facilities?
So far, there has been no successful attempt to carry out an airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities. But since the United States and the Israeli regime are aggressive and since they ignore international law, the Iranians have put all of their key assets underground. So even if the Israeli regime wants to attack, Iranian nuclear infrastructure or the Americans want to do such a thing, it would be virtually impossible for them to destroy the nuclear programme.
Q: Does the present crisis in West Asia compel Iran to develop nuclear weapons and achieve parity of status vis-à-vis Israel?
Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme is more developed than Israel’s programme. But unlike the Israeli regime, which has nuclear weapons, Iran has never pursued such capabilities. Iran does not desire to produce nuclear weapons. If Iran had wanted nuclear weapons, it could have developed them many years ago. And it is easy for us to do so. Iran is an advanced country. But the Israeli regime has produced nuclear weapons and has threatened countries and people with those weapons. This says a lot about the Israeli regime. On the other hand, Iran has never threatened anyone, nor has it pursued the option of having nuclear weapons. So I think there’s a big difference between the Israeli regime and Iran when it comes to nuclear energy and humane behaviour.
No. Iran believes that nuclear weapons capability would only encourage more countries to have such weapons. Iran’s policy is to steer clear of such weapons. Iran has always been sincere in this regard. I can cite a good example. In the 1980s, during the war that Saddam Hussein imposed on Iran with Western support, Western countries gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons. He used them extensively, with Western support. They also gave him military intelligence to use chemical weapons and political cover to be able to use the weapon without being condemned. The Iranian leader said Iran would not pursue chemical weapons, even though Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons against Iran. Iran refused to produce its own chemical weapons in response. So Iran’s policy for nuclear weapons is the same. It will not develop such weapons because Iran sees them as a threat to world peace.
Q: With a genocidal war continuing in occupied Palestinian territories, once again, the two-state solution is being discussed. What is Iran’s solution to the Palestinian crisis, given Iran’s close ties with Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian leaders’ statements such as Israel should be wiped out from the world map?
Well, the solution for Iran is that Israel must cease to exist as an apartheid regime and that the only solution is a one-state solution. Israel does not have the moral right to exist as a supremacist regime. The Israelis have to come to terms with the reality that all human beings are equal and of equal value, and they cannot choose one race over another or one ethnicity over another and erase a population from the lands and plant another population from Europe. That is not going to happen. It won’t be accepted, and the region won’t allow it.
For Iran, the only solution is one where Jews, Christians, and Muslims live side by side as equal citizens. You have something like this in your own country. You have people with different ethnicities and different religions, but you do not have a hierarchical system where you say one race is superior or one person from one ethnic background is superior. In your country, people do not take the land or houses of other people. There is relative harmony. That is what we must be seeing in Palestine. In any case, the Israeli regime has colonised so much of the West Bank that a two-state solution is infeasible anyway.
Q: The United States and Israel are portraying Iran as a bogey and pressurising Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel. This also enables the US and Western arms dealers to make a killing. In the meantime, to allay the Arab country’s fears, especially about the so-called Shiite crescent, Iran has extended its olive branch to Saudi Arabia with China’s mediation. Do you think the Arab countries’ normalisation process with Israel is a threat to Iran’s security?
I think the normalisation with Israel is a threat to their own security because the public opinion is extremely hostile towards the Israeli regime’s policy, ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the general dehumanisation of the Palestinian public. So whether it’s in the Arabian Peninsula or elsewhere, the public is fully against any normalization. If a leader or a ruler in an Arab country moves towards some sort of deal with Israelis or some sort of relationship, that person’s or that regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of its own population will decline. Especially after the genocide in Gaza. The situation has changed dramatically. Israel is now seen as a pariah state, or pariah regime, to be more accurate, across the world. Even traditional friends of Israel are distancing themselves, and we see how today, even in the United States, young people, including many young heroic Jews, are standing up against the Zionist regime. So at a time when the regime’s legitimacy has been questioned by an increasingly large number of people, I find it very unlikely that Arab leaders would move in the opposite direction.
Q: Your country is facing fresh sanctions from the United States and its Western allies following the April 14 attack on Israel. As you know, US sanctions prevented Iran from disbursing continuous funding for the Uma Oya project, which your president, Ebrahim Raisi, declared open on Friday. The fresh sanctions will target ports and refineries that handle Iranian oil, dealing a major blow to Iran’s economy, which has been recording somewhat moderate growth in recent years despite sanctions. How will Iran overcome the challenges to its economy from sanctions?
The Iranian economy grew at over 6% last year, and the year before it had relatively good growth. We’ll have to see what happens in the year ahead. But the new sanctions really won’t have any meaningful impact on the Iranian economy. The reason is that the United States is already implementing what they call maximum pressure sanctions. So you can’t become more maximum than maximum. They’ve literally sanctioned everything that is to be sanctioned. There isn’t much that they can really do, and they’ve lost their leverage. This is also true in the energy market. Today, it is a very tight market. There is no excess capacity. The price of oil is pretty high right now as Russian oil and Venezuelan oil are sanctioned. The United States really cannot prevent Iran from exporting its oil. As we speak, it is being exported to different countries despite the sanctions, and Iran is producing oil at full capacity and selling everything that it has. So, I highly doubt that the American sanctions will have much of an impact on Iran.
A: I think the very fact that the Iranian President is here today and a major project has been inaugurated shows the limits of American power. Our president’s trip to Pakistan was also successful. The two sides agreed to push for the gas pipeline. So again, I think it shows that gradually, the influence of the United States is on the decline. The countries of the Global South recognise that they cannot sacrifice themselves simply because the Americans want them to do so.
Q: You mentioned the Global South. Iran is committed to non-aligned principles, which some critics say are as good as dead. However, a revival of the Non-Aligned Movement has been witnessed in the awakening of the Global South. Your country is a new member of the BRICs. Do you think BRICS and the global south can bring about a world order based on justice and peace?
Non-alignment as a concept is alive. It is becoming increasingly important. And BRICS is one manifestation of that belief. BRICS is on the rise, and it brings countries from across the globe and the Global South together to enhance economic cooperation with one another, independent of Western financial institutions and independent from Western pressure. But it is not only BRICS; other regional organisations are also on the rise. One such organisation that Iran joined a couple of years ago was the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. So we do see movements across the Global South to create regional and global organisations to enhance the role of Global South countries and to make sure Western countries do not overstep their bounds in the future as they have done in the past.
We are moving towards a multipolar order, and it will be complicated. It will be messy. It will probably be very dangerous in many parts of the world. But I think it’s inevitable. The West is on a relative decline. It has been on the relative decline for quite a while, and I think that the decline has quickened because of Gaza. Their soft power across the world has diminished because the world sees them as supporting genocide and also because of their military and economic conflict with Russia, which has hurt the West more than it has hurt Russia. So these two recent events are acting as catalysts and speeding up the decline of the West even further. I’m not saying that the West is going to be a diminished entity and that it will have no influence, but I think it will have a relatively small amount of influence in global affairs in the future.
Q: You spoke about Iran’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, but I also see that you have close strategic relations with Russia and China. Iran is also pushing for or partnering with them to de-dollarize the international financial system. So against this backdrop, are we seeing a new Cold War?
I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as that because, during the Cold War, there were two predominant ideologies. It was liberal capitalism on the one side and socialism and communism on the other. Even though back then it wasn’t all that clear-cut either, because the Soviet Union and the Chinese had sharp differences that increased, especially after Nixon travelled to China, But it’s even more diverse now. The amount of ideological and cultural diversity that we see today is much greater than it was back then.
Russia is not the Soviet Union. China is not the China of the 1970s and 80s. In general, many Global South countries have become much more important than before. Countries like Iran, Brazil, and South Africa carry much more weight than they did back then. So I don’t think it’s going to be bipolar. I think it will be multipolar, but it will be more fluid than many people probably think. But I would also add that Iran’s increasingly important relationship with Russia and China is partially due to the policies of the West itself. When the West antagonises Russia and Iran, it creates an incentive for them to come closer to each other. When the West antagonises China, they incentivize China to move closer to Iran and Russia. And when the West sanctions Russia, then that creates a greater incentive for Russia to cooperate with India, and Iran becomes the transport corridor between Russia and India. So the West is inadvertently creating a whole new environment for trade, business, and politics from which it is excluded. It is largely because of its own policies that it antagonises so many countries simultaneously.
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