Iran using the Palestinian issue to serve its own interests

Islam Mohamed

Tehran has been trying to prove that it is keen on serving the interests of the Palestinians more than Arab countries do.

This has been a policy of the Islamic Republic, especially since some Arab states started making peace with Israel.

In factual terms, Tehran did this only in order to serve its own interests and advance its colonial Farsi project in the region.

The same country had carried out multiple massacres against the Arabs in Iraq and Lebanon. It occupied Ahwaz region in 1925 and has been persecuting its Arab residents ever since.

Tehran has taken a hostile position to peace with Israel.

However, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was founded and headed by late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, fell afoul of Tehran when it attended the Madrid Conference in 1991 and then signed the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Enmity between Tehran and the PLO increased even more when Arafat stipulated support for the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran (1980 – 1988).

The peace project came to constitute a strategic threat for Iranian interests and Iran’s aspirations to export the ideals of its Islamic Revolution to other countries in the region.

This is why Iran uses the Palestinian issue as a platform to mobilize Arabs and gain legitimacy for its regime. It also banked on regional militias, such as Hezbollah, to serve its interests in the region and market its own project.

In his book, “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.”, Trita Parsi argues that peace between the Arabs and Israel will harm Iranian strategic interests.

The same peace, he says, will sway Arabs away from Iran, especially Syria, which will lead to Iran’s strategic isolation.

Parsi adds that when it pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, Israel wanted to pull the carpet from under the feat of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia which used to introduce itself to the Lebanese people and all Arabs as a resistance movement.