Iranian Regime Protest Day

We are currently in the shadow of a horrendous nightmare in Iran that did not begin in the last few weeks but that has tortured the people of Iran and plagued the world for nearly half a century. My heart aches for my Iranian brothers and sisters watching this descent into savagery that has cost the lives of tens of thousands. As we read the individual stories of the tortured, raped and murdered, the full realisation dawns of what a tragic loss to all humanity this is. It is a reminder of how this barbaric regime with its medieval ideology has robbed the world of the full flowering of a people that value education and are the true custodians of one of the proudest and richest civilisations the world has seen.

Since this regime took hold it has done nothing but promote evil and suffering around the world. The success of an Islamist extremist force seizing control of an entire country provided inspiration to those who desired the return of the caliphates in a malevolent new form. The underpinning ideology that the regime then evolved is on a level every bit as heinous as the Nazis.

Their concept of the belief in the eventual revelation of the 12th Imam is that until that day the Supreme Leader of Iran, at present the Ayatollah Khamanei, is meant to be his voice and all Muslims should owe their fealty to him. The event that the regime believes will trigger the 12th Imam revealing himself will be the complete destruction of Israel and the slaughter of all Jews. This will in turn precipitate the globalisation of Islam in a world that will be purged of all other faiths.

The regime has made no secret of its genocidal agenda and the level of its savage intent extends to all those who do not accept this vision, including Muslims. Their relentless attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is directed exclusively at achieving this mission. That fanatical ambition has meant the treasure of Iran has not been applied to the needs and benefit of its people but to the service of this evil. When asked about the massive loss of life to Muslims if nuclear weapons were used to destroy Israel their answer is that these innocent victims would go straight to paradise and be rewarded as martyrs.

To achieve its ambitions of dominance of the Islamic world on the way to these goals they have created a galaxy of proxies throughout the Middle East that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and at least nine other organisations across Syria, Iraq and Bahrain. Underpinning this construct is the doctrine that these organisations should aspire to “Vilayet status” that is that they subject themselves completely to the Supreme Leader as the voice of the 12th Imam and accept the full command and control of the IRGC. The poster child of this concept is Hezbollah but the other groups have increasingly been drawn into it.

This means that when Israel was assailed from seven different directions, including Iran from 7 Oct 2023 onwards, it was in effect the commission of the Crime of Aggression under Article 8bis(g) of the Rome Statute. What did the UN and the international community do about that? What did the International Criminal Court do about that? Which countries took Iran to the ICJ in relation to this clear violation and its manifest genocidal intent?
These proxies have been used by Iran to promote war, terror and revolution right across the Middle East, North Africa in a plan to destabilise governance in the region and supplant it with this world of obeisance and fealty. It is the Iranian regime that has been the true imperialists and cultural colonisers of our times.

There should have therefore been no surprise at the level of savagery and genocidal actions exhibited by Hamas on 7 October 2023, it was simply the manifestation of their master’s intent, which has now played out on a massive scale against their own people.

Why should we expect any decency from Iran and its proxies when for 47 years they have been treating their own people in this way? The brutal repression of Iranian women, the routine execution of LGBTQI people macabrely hung from cranes in group executions, no free trade unions, no free elections. No free speech or right of assembly. Draconian laws enforced by the brutal Basij militia who operate totally outside any recognisable legal framework and who are part of the systemic corruption and control of the Iranian kleptocratic government and economy.

Where was the UN and the world while all this played out, where were the voices of our governments and the much broader concerted sanctions and actions that should have been rigorously applied across every available legal means.

Where was the UN, women’s organisations and the world when Iranian women artists, writers and political figures marked the anniversaries of the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, whose case ignited nationwide protests under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”? Where are they all now?
I am pleased our government finally rectified the inexcusable refusal to list the Hezbollah political wing and the IRGC as terrorist organisations. How could they not when the direct action of the global export of terror by the IRGC played out on our own soil. But why did we not head the relentless hunting of Iranian dissidents in the diaspora and the development of terror cells across the globe by Hezbollah, beginning with the outrage of the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires Argentina in 1994 that killed 85 people.

Now more than ever our democracies are under existential threat by the malevolent alignment of Iran, Russia, China and North Korea (the rectangle of ratbags we might say in Australia). These regimes are working in tight coordination to export their armed aggression and corrode democracies from within through their sophisticated information warfare trade craft. They are working to exploit faultlines and pervert our children’s minds. The clueless consumers of their propaganda have been the so-called progressive elements of our communities who have betrayed every value they claim to hold and support.

This alliance has combined to rape, pillage and plunder North Africa. Russia and Iran have fuelled the genocide and mass casualties in Sudan on a biblical scale and yet “progressives” remain silent. They have bent Libya, Mali, Niger, Chad and The Central African Republic to their will, fomenting coups and supporting kleptocracies. They have stolen Africa’s precious resources of gold, diamonds, timber and oil circumventing sanctions and rendering misery to the African people. They control a large slice of the global drug trade, particularly through their headquarters in Venezuela. Hezbollah for example earns 30% of its revenue from this drug trade which brings so much misery and lost income to the world.

Iran and this criminal club could care less about the suffering they inflict, after all the victims are infidels, apostates and regime opponents. We have been unbelievably gullible in the West in the face of all this. We have deluded ourselves that diplomatic engagement and dialogue is the way to manage the Iranian threat. This approach has manifestly failed. We have not understood that for regimes like Iran and its proxies lying to the infidel is an article of faith.

Ceasefires or Hudnas and Aramesh as they are called by the terrorists and Iranian regime are only a temporary pause in the jihad to eliminate infidels and apostates, not a step towards peaceful settlements. The jihadists can never accept that this global campaign will end in any other outcome. Any agreement that has ever been made by them has been broken such as the ceasefire that was in place in Gaza up to 7 Oct, the violations by Hamas of the current ceasefire and the playing of the West like an old fiddle in relation to the regime’s nuclear commitments.

And the UN has presided over all this by becoming a vehicle for the propaganda of the autocrats and a whitewashing facility for their domestic atrocities.  Antonio Guterres has been the worst Secrtary General in UN history and has presided over its demise as a contributor to world peace and the advance of human rights and democracy.

There is hope, however. There is hope that the international community will rally effectively to their aid and not betray them with false promises. There is hope in the offer by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to provide a stable pillar of transition while a referendum is held to select a democracy of either a constitutional monarchy or republican character. Above all there is hope in the continuing courage of the Iranian people.

But all of us have a role to play. We must be of the combined conviction that this situation is unacceptable, and we must communicate this to our representatives.

The scale of the slaughter is shocking, and the silence is shameful.

Mike Kelly is a former ADF soldier, Labor government minister and the co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel.

This op-ed also comes from the speech Kelly made on on Thursday 5 Feb.