Recently, there was a Twitter quarrel between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which each accused the other of lying. In the wake of that, it is reasonable to put Zarif’s sincerity into perspective.
In 2015, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Zarif said of Iran’s regime, “We do not jail people for their opinions.”
That is a lie. Since the beginning of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian people have been imprisoned for their religion, political affiliations, and for expressing their opinions about the regime itself. Just recently, May Kholousi and her daughter Saghi Fadaei, two Baha’i women living in Mashhad, were put in prison simply for practicing their faith. Sattar Beheshti of Robat-Karim was a blogger who died in November 2012 while jailed for criticizing the regime on Facebook. He had merely expressed his opinion.
And there are countless other examples easy to find.
In December 2017, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., unveiled debris from an Iranian-made ballistic missile that the Houthi rebels in Yemen had launched into Saudi Arabia. Zarif responded by going on a rampage on Twitter, accusing Haley of presenting fabricated evidence. A regime foreign ministry spokesperson later said Iran had “no arms links with Yemen” and that “weapons used by the Yemenis today are leftovers in the bases of previous governments.”
Not a year later, on Nov. 4, 2018, the Fars News Agency, a media platform close to the Revolutionary Guard, boasted that Iranian-designed Zalzal-2 missiles were used by Houthis to attack Saudi military positions in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a. Of course, Fars added that the missiles were “home-made” by the Yemeni army.
Notwithstanding, the components and the instructions for production of these missiles were likely supplied by the regime. So again, Zarif lied.
In an interview with Aljazeera last month, when he was asked whether Iran should be considered a democracy if it has been ruled by a supreme leader for 29 years, Zarif said that the Iranian people actually elect the supreme leader. Zarif claimed, “The supreme leader can be removed any day by a body that elected him. And that body was elected by the people.”
Well, not exactly. The “body” Zarif is referring to is the Assembly of Experts. Members are “elected” after a vetting process by another body called the Guardian Council, and ultimately have to be approved by the supreme leader before gaining membership. The Assembly of Experts so far has never removed any leader.
To quote a 17th century English diplomat, an ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. Zarif, however, does not lie for the benefit of his country, but rather for the good of the regime.
He puts on a spurious front for the regime to appear innocent and harmless before the international community.
That is why, this past spring, in reaction to Zarif’s dishonesty, Iranian dissidents created a hashtag on Twitter that said, #ZaifIsALiar. So if the Iranian people see Zarif as a swindler, how can the rest of the world view him otherwise?
Source » washingtonexaminer