September 27-2013
President Rohani’s charm offensive took the day off Tuesday as the president used his speech to the UN General Assembly to launch a comprehensive attack on the major powers.
Some called his address “Ahmadi-nejad lite.”
The speech appeared aimed at two audiences—first, hard-liners at home who fear Rohani is about to give away the revolution, and, second, the many developing countries in the UN that Iran believes fear Western pressures and thus might be sympathetic to Iran’s condemnation of the major powers.
It should be noted that President Obama also included some “red meat” to appease his own hardliners; Rohani is not alone in facing criticism at home from the right. But Rohani’s UN address was very different from what he has been saying over the last four months since he launched his campaign. The speech was long on vitriol, packed with criticism of the Western world, and long on appeals to the developing world to oppose the West.
It was a vintage revolutionary foreign policy appeal.
Near the very start of his speech, Rohani launched his attack, saying, “A few actors still tend to rely on archaic and deeply ineffective ways and means to preserve their old superiority and domination. Militarism and the recourse to violent and military means to subjugate others are failed examples of the perpetuation of old ways in new circumstances.
“Coercive economic and military policies and practices geared to the maintenance and preservation of old superiorities and dominations have been pursued in a conceptual mindset that negates peace, security, human dignity, and exalted human ideals. Ignoring differences between societies and globalizing Western values as universal ones represent another manifestation of this conceptual mindset,” Rohani said.
“Yet another reflection of the same cognitive model is the persistence of Cold War mentality and bi-polar division of the world into ‘superior us’ and ‘inferior others.’ Fanning fear and phobia around the emergence of new actors on the world scene is another.”
Rohani said, “Strategic violence, which is manifested in the efforts to deprive regional players from their natural domain of action, containment policies, regime change from outside, and the efforts towards redrawing of political borders and frontiers, is extremely dangerous and provocative.”
The English version of the speech used here is the official English text that the Islamic Republic presented to the United Nations.
Rohani did not cite any countries by name, and it appeared he was being as general as possible so any group could fit in the name of any country it felt to be oppressive.
But the theme repeated over and over again was that “powers,” whoever they might be, are bullies trying to rule over everyone else. “The prevalent international political discourse depicts a civilized center surrounded by un-civilized peripheries,” he said. “In this picture, the relation between the center of world power and the peripheries is hegemonic. The discourse assigning the North the center stage and relegating the South to the periphery has led to the establishment of a monologue at the level of international relations.”
He complained that the unnamed powers were promoting “Islamo-phobic, Shia-phobic, and Iran-phobic discourses” around the world, building up imaginary threats to frighten people, although some might say that was exactly what Rohani was doing in his UN address.
“One such imaginary threat is the so-called ‘Iranian threat,” which has been employed as an excuse to justify a long catalogue of crimes and catastrophic practices over the past three decades.”
He said that “the arming of the Saddam Hussein regime with chemical weapons and supporting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are just two examples.”
Rohani summed up: “Based on irrefutable evidence, those who harp on the so-called threat of Iran are either a threat against international peace and security themselves or promote such a threat.
“Iran poses absolutely no threat to the world or the region. In fact, in ideals as well as in actual practice, my country has been a harbinger of just peace and comprehensive security.”
