In a major address seeking to calm the Sunni-Shia sectarian stresses that have helped feed the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi Monday said the disorders and bloodshed are entirely the fault of the United States and have nothing whatsoever to do with internal frictions inside the Middle East.
Addressing a gathering of the Islamic Radio & Television Union, Khamenehi said, “The hegemonic system’s plan for the region is based on the twin pillars of division and infiltration, which should be fought against vigilantly and incessantly through correct offensive and defensive plans.”
He never explained what those offensive and defensive plans should be, however, preferring to focus on denunciations of the West in general and the United States in particular as the cause of all the afflictions bedeviling the Islamic world.
It was another bravura rhetorical performance in which Khamenehi described the Western world and the United States as a powerful monster capable of manipulating societies in every corner of the world, while at the same time the regime’s military spokesmen portray the US as a weakling that is collapsing with each passing day and is incapable of doing any harm to Iran whatsoever because of its impending demise.
Khamenehi said, “The enemy’s conspiracies in the Middle East have been intensified due to the enemy’s panic in the aftermath of the Islamic Awakening that started in North Africa a few years ago.
“They believe that they have managed to quell the Islamic Awakening, but this movement is not suppressible and is racing ahead and it will show its reality sooner or later,” Khamenehi said, ignoring the fact that Iran continued to support the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt even after President Obama publicly said it was time for Mubarak to go, and that Iran strongly opposed the joint Western-Arab intervention in Libya that helped topple the regime of Moammar Qadhdhafi.
Those are two of the three governments swept away in what Iran calls the Islamic Awakening and the rest of the world calls the Arab Spring. The third was the collapse of the regime in Tunisia, which happened so quickly none had time to anticipate it.
Khamenehi said, “The US is devoid of human ethics and embarks on wickedness and crime with no bridle and under the guise of attractive words and smiles.”
He said American policy in the region is a “plot based on the two pillars of ‘causing division’ and ‘infiltration.’ Causing discord among governments and more dangerously, among peoples, is on the agenda of global arrogance,” his preferred term for the West in general and the United States in particular.
“Creating murderous, insolent and tyrannical takfiri groups—and Americans have admitted to their role in creating them—is the most important tool for stoking seemingly religious divisions among nations.
“Unfortunately, some naive Muslims have been fooled by this conspiracy. Due to their lack of insight, they have become embroiled in the enemy’s plot.”
Khamenehi cited Syria as an example. “When the despotic regimes were toppled in Tunisia and Egypt by Islamic slogans, the Americans and Zionists decided to use this formula to devastate resistant countries and that is why they turned to Syria.
“A group of Muslims who lacked insight were dragged into the plot and drove Syria into its present conditions,” said Khamenehi.
“In Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other locations, efforts are underway to describe what is happening there as sectarian war. It is by no means a sectarian war. It is a political war,” Khamenehi said.
Many analysts in the West agree. But the growing view on the street in the Arab world is that it is sectarian, with Iran the schemer behind the disorder. It is that view that Khamenehi is desperate to reverse.
Khamenei proclaimed, “We have said clearly and openly that the Islamic Republic of Iran extends its hand of friendship toward all Muslim governments in the region and has no problem with Muslim governments.”
He has said that many times, but in Sunni quarters that remark is most often greeted with disdain—especially since Iranian state propaganda decries most governments in the Islamic world as being non-Islamic.
Khamenehi said, “In our support of the oppressed, we do not look at [their] religious denomination. We have offered the same support that we provided to our Shia brethren in Lebanon to our Sunni brethren in Gaza, and we consider the issue of Palestine as the top issue of the Muslim world.”
Indeed, ever since the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic has tried to keep the Palestinian cause front and center, seeing that as the one unifying cause across the Islamic world that avoids sectarian frictions.
Khamenehi charged that Washington is seeking to exploit Iran’s nuclear agreement with the Big Six, saying, “Americans intend to use the text … as an instrument for infiltration in Iran, but we have firmly blocked this way and use all our high power to deny Americans any economic, political or cultural infiltration or political presence in Iran.”
He didn’t say how that could be done given that under the agreement the United States will continue its ban on Americans investing in, exporting to and importing from Iran. That would seem to block most paths of “infiltration.”
He once again accused the United States of trying to partition Iraq, saying, “Some people were surprised at those remarks, but today, Americans are openly talking about the disintegration of Iraq.” Indeed, some US analysts have long advocated partition as a solution to ethnic frictions. But neither the Bush nor the Obama Administrations have ever supported that idea.
“Disintegration of Iraq, and, if they could, Syria, is the clear goal of Americans,” Khamenehi stressed. He didn’t explain why that wasn’t done in 2003 when the United States military controlled Iraq and could have partitioned the state overnight.
In conclusion, the Supreme Leader said, “Despite ranting by global arrogance and its followers, the dignity and power of Islam is clear and guaranteed thanks to the presence of combatant men and youths and women, and the future of the region belongs to the Muslim peoples.”