Crimes by Israel, Sanctions for Iran

By Kourosh Ziabari

Photo: Crimes by Israel, Sanctions for Iran

The Iranian nation is not unfamiliar with the double standards of the superpowers anymore. The history of Iran's relations with the western and eastern superpowers is filled with deceitfulness, dishonesty and fraudulence. The recent U.S.-proposed, Russia-backed United Nations Security Council resolution against Iran over its nuclear program is simply one example out of hundreds of instances which demonstrate that the big powers have not ever been honest and sincere with Iran.

While the international community is witness to the flagrant, ceaseless and unrelenting felonies of the illegitimate regime of Israel in the occupied territories of Gaza and West Bank, United Nations Security Council blindly voted in favor of an unfair, unilateral and unjustifiable round of sanctions against the most pacifist and peace-lover country in the region simply because it wants to progress its civilian nuclear program domestically and without foreign intervention.

The new round of sanctions against Iran comes in the wake of Israel's continued blockade of the Gaza strip in violation of the UNSC resolution 1860 which demanded Tel Aviv last year to end the siege and allow the humanitarian aids to be transferred to the beleaguered enclave. More interestingly, the UNSC resolution against Iran was adopted while the international community was expecting a decisive and clear-cut reaction to Israel's assault on the convoy of humanitarian aid heading from Turkey towards the Gaza strip.

Israel's recent incursion into the sailboats of Freedom Flotilla which cost the lives of 20 peace activists and left 50 others wounded was a clear and untainted violation of Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988. Let's pose a simple question: what would happen if it was Iran that had attacked the Freedom Flotilla? Would the reaction of UNSC have been the same?

The exercise of double standards knows no nationality, race, time and place. Over the past four months, the White House recurrently attacked Iran over the incarceration of three American hikers who entered Iran illegally and are now awaiting trial by the judiciary over their lawbreaking. Did the same American officials say a single word in protest to the killing of Furkan Dogan, the 19-year-old American-Turkish high school boy whom the Israeli forces killed in what they called the "Operation Sea Breeze"? Did they protest when the IDF troops boarded on the Freedom Flotilla and arrested Edward Peck, the former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Mauritania? Would they react similarly if Iran had arrested a former U.S. Ambassador?

Israel attacked the citizens of 37 countries in a vicious operation which extremely frightened the international community and once again showed the brutal and inhuman nature of the Zionist regime. Most of the European officials who condemned the attack for fear of the growing anger of public opinions did their best to use the most softened and equivocal language so as to avoid targeting Israeli officials directly. Nobody tried to hold Tel Aviv accountable for what was an evident and undeniable massacre of defenseless civilians who were trying to break an illegal imprisonment of more than 1.5 million people who are in dire need of foodstuff, medicines, fuel, gasoline, wheelchairs, renewed infrastructure and shelter. Over the past 40 years, Israel has demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and is now holding some 1.5 million people in an open-air jail which no international body has so far succeeded to unlock.

Israel autonomously violates international regulations, defies the calls of UN and human rights organizations and even disregards the calls of its own citizens who sympathize with the subjugated and anguished people of Palestine. UNSC ignores all of these crimes and felonies indifferently and adopts a resolution against Iran to punish the country for its civilian nuclear program, overlooking the 200 nuclear warheads which are accumulated in the arsenals of Israeli regime. That is something which even exceeds double standards. This is the inhumanity of UNSC.