Jihadist propaganda brazenly ascends again. This time, it’s the rogue state of Iran accusing the US of backing the Islamic State and the “Zionist regime”, in retaliation for the State Department citing Iran as the world’s biggest state-sponsor of terrorism.
Four years ago, Canada took a sensible lead: it listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and shut down its embassy in Tehran. Not long before, it had been revealed that Iran was using its embassy in Canada to mobilize Islamic Republic loyalists to infiltrate the Canadian Government and attack the United States.
Unfortunately, this past winter, the Liberal government decided to lift virtually all sanctions against Iran and is considering re-opening its embassy in Tehran.
The views of many, such as Thomas Juneau — who is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa and a former Mid-East analyst for the Canadian Armed Forces — reflect a certain type of Western liberal mindset that allows radicalism to flourish. Juneau told CBC News that he is “of the school of thought that you talk to bad guys” and that “it’s completely in Canada’s interests to have diplomatic relations with Iran”. He adds that “all our European partners do”. Perplexing that Juneau would attempt to forward such an approach with reference to Iran; and have Juneau et al looked at the state of Europe lately?
Even CNN (usually regarded as leftist) released an article last year entitled “Fighting radical Islam: Why Europe should move to war footing”, in which it stated that Europe “must first understand its enemy in radical Islam, then understand how it spreads in our continent — only then can it find a solution to destroying the threat……They say that one can’t fight an ideology. However, this ideology is armed with guns, knives and explosives and if it is driven by people then it surely can be fought, and must ever be so.”
So perhaps Juneau et al actually think that if Western officials “talk to the bad guys” in Iran — who insist that they are engaged in a struggle against “occupation” — the Iranians might stop: their human rights abuses, supporting conflicts in Syria and Iraq, give up on their nuclear ambitions against Israel, stop funding Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and stop killing Israelis and other innocents, and even their own fellow Muslims. A little talking to the bad guys might even curb propaganda.
“Iran blasts US report on terrorism, saying DC backs ISIS, ‘Zionists’”, by Ariel Ben Solomon, Jerusalem Post, June 5, 2016:
Iran rejected terrorism charges raised against it in an annual US State Department report, Iranian media outlets reported on Sunday, with a top official accusing Washington of backing Islamic State and the “Zionist regime.”
“Today, the US is using Islamic State as an instrument and defends the Zionist regime, but puts Iran on the list of terrorists because the Islamic Republic has stood against and confronted their main strategy and hegemony,” Ali Shamkhani told reporters in Tehran on Sunday.
“But this will not affect the Islamic Republic of Iran’s policies in defending the regional states, and it shows the West’s double-standard policy on terrorism,” he added, according to Iran’s Fars News Agency.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari was quoted by the state news agency IRNA as saying: “The legitimate struggle of nations that are occupied… are not examples of terrorism, and such charges in the American report are rejected.”
Ansari in turn condemned “US military interference and destructive support for terrorist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen,” the agency said.
As in previous years, the State Department report cited Iran as the world’s biggest state-sponsor of terrorism, saying Tehran supported conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and was implicated in violent Shi’ite opposition raids in Bahrain….