With the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza now approaching its first anniversary, it’s time to recognize the real impediment to a lasting peace in the Mideast, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In that context, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s claim on Monday that Iran doesn’t want a war with Israel is laughable.
A state sponsor of terrorism, Iran funds, arms and trains Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Its dictators deny the Holocaust and Israel’s right to exist, while at the same time waging war on their own people seeking basic human rights.
Iran uses the death penalty, arbitrary arrest, detention and torture to quell popular uprisings against the regime and violently enforces veiling laws aimed at subjugating and terrorizing Iranian women and girls.
On Jan. 8, 2020, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 minutes after taking off from Tehran airport for Kyiv, killing all 176 people on board including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
Those are the reasons many Iranian dissidents living in Canada are among Israel’s strongest supporters in the ongoing war in the Mideast — including denouncing the explosion of anti-Semitism that has occurred in Canada ever since Hamas launched its terrorist attack on Israel last Oct. 7.
They recognize that as long as Iran is allowed to continue its proxy wars against Israel, there will be no two-state solution of an independent Palestinian state living in peace beside a secure Israel.
Contrast their informed view to the kid glove treatment Iran receives from the United Nations, year after year, which just concluded a so-called Summit of the Future at the UN’s headquarters in New York on Monday.
Last year, as reported by Human Rights Watch, the UN General Assembly — consistent with its long history of collective anti-Semitism and imposing moral double standards on Israel — passed 15 resolutions against the world’s only Jewish state.
That’s more than twice as many resolutions as the UNGA passed critical of every other nation on earth combined — seven — including just one against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As long as the UN employs this double standard in favour of Iran and against Israel, no permanent peace is possible.