July 19, 2019
A Spaniard who has expressed great admiration for the Islamic Republic of Iran, including its intervention in Syria, has been nominated as the next head of foreign affairs for the European Union.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, 72, is a long-time activist in the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and just became foreign minister of Spain early in June, a post he will now have to give up.
At the EU, he will replace Federica Mogherini of Italy, who steps down in November. Borrell was nominated July 3 by the European Council and must be approved by the European Parliament, but that is considered largely a formality. The formal title of the post is high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy.
Borrell was born in a village in northern Spain, but represented Barcelona in the Spanish Cortez or Parliament. He has been a strong opponent of the secession of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital.
In one month as foreign minister, he has mainly shown an interest in boosting Spanish cooperation with China and has embraced China’s controversial Belt and Road initiative.
Borrell laid out his sympathies for the Islamic Republic in a series of seven tweets he posted in February to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Among the regime’s achievements, he said, were massive increases in literacy, the number of women attending university and its regional influence.
Iran “played an essential role in the Syria war, helping [Syrian President Bashar] Assad while the Americans retreat,” Borrell commented.
Borrell embraced the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, a curious position given that the UN and the International Court of Justice both condemned the seizure. “My contemporaries will remember the shocking image of the Americans fleeing from Saigon [in Vietnam] from the roof of their legation on a helicopter pad in 1975,” he wrote. “In 1979 the guardians of the [Iranian] revolution took over the US embassy with hundreds of hostages inside.”
With obvious satisfaction, Borrell noted that these episodes “were two harsh defeats of the [US] superpower in the ’70s.”
He said Iran could survive the economic sanctions imposed by the “Iran-obsessed” US this year “if Trump is not re-elected.”
The alternative, said Borrell, was for Iran to “reactivate the nuclear program for military purposes and multiply its interventions in the region.”