Arab dignitaries condemn Iranian repression at Brussels meeting

Support for anti-government protest movement in Iran is lukewarm across Arab world, analysts say

People protest in support of the Iranian protests in Geneva, Switzerland. EPA

A dozen Arab activists and former officials criticised Iran on Friday over a months-long crackdown on a protest movement against clerical rule, breaking some of the silence in the region on Iran’s treatment of its own citizens.

At a gathering organised in Brussels by an Iranian opposition group, former Jordanian minister of religious affairs Hayel Abdelhafiz Dawoud said that “Iranian authorities consider their own people as enemies” and called on the Arab world to show solidarity and “pay tribute to the martyrs”.

The Iranian uprising, which began in September after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for wearing her mandatory headscarf “improperly”, has drawn little interest in a region reeling from various other upheavals.

But in Brussels, prominent Syrian human rights activist Haytham Al Maleh described Iran as a “fascist regime” bent on destroying several countries in the region, including his own.

Speaking via video-link, former Lebanese justice minister Ashraf Rifi, one of his country's most vocally anti-Iran politicians, said that the current Iranian regime “ignores plurality and wishes to impose tyranny and totalitarianism under the pretext of a religion”.

A minority of participants, including Algerian lawyer Anouar Malek and Yemen’s representative at Unesco Mohammed Jumeh, called on the EU to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group, echoing a call made by the European Parliament last week.

Only the EU Council, which includes representatives of EU governments, can approve such a measure. Sources previously told The National that it requires a decision by a court in one of the bloc’s 27 countries.

The IRGC was formed after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 and has become a major military and economic force in the country. It was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in 2019.

Protests in Iran have lost momentum in recent weeks after a harsh response by security authorities, including death sentences.

US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says more than 500 people have been killed and about 20,000 arrested.

Haitham Al Maleh in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Getty

Analysts say that displays of solidarity have been notably lower in the Arab world compared to the West. In October, prominent French actresses cut their hair in a video to support the Iranian protest movement.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at Washington-based think tank the New Lines Institute and an expert on the Levant, told The National there was ambivalence about the protest movement in the Middle East but not about Iran overall.

“There is definitely widespread anger about Iranian intervention in countries like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq,” she said.

“But support for the current protest movement is quite limited at least in Syria and Iraq because it’s clearly led by women and it’s about women’s rights,” she said.

“Syria and Iraq are overwhelmingly conservative societies. Most women wear the hijab and men think it’s the right thing to do.”

Jordanian MP Asma Al Rawahneh, who was one of three women to speak at Friday’s event, said that she was against the “ready-made idea that the hijab is the key to all this”.

She also said that “there is a trend towards marginalising women and thus weakening society” in the Middle East.

“Whenever women are marginalised, societies are handicapped,” she added.

Lebanese politician Mustafa Allouche, who was one of the guest speakers, told The National that it was important for him to communicate during his speech that his fellow citizens in Lebanon also suffered from Iran’s regional interference, notably via the Iran-backed Lebanese militia-cum-political party Hezbollah.

“To get rid of wilayat al-fakih would also help Lebanon, Syria and Iraq,” he said, referring to the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, a concept that forms the basis of the Iranian republic under the leadership of its current supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Maryam Rajavi attends the Brussels conference remotely. Photo: National Council of Resistance of Iran

But he also said that Arabs were divided over their support for Iran’s protest movement, in large part because of a general lack of freedom of speech, apathy linked to financial crises across the region and widespread support for the Palestinian cause, which is championed by Iran.

The Brussels event, which took place in a venue close to the European Council and the European Commission, was mostly aimed at showing European decision makers that its organiser, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, plays a significant role both inside and outside Iran, according to Mr Allouche.

“It was obvious that the mujahideen want to tell the Europeans: We are important and we represent the [opposition],” said Mr Allouche, referring to the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an organisation set up in the 1980s which is led by Maryam Rajavi.

Ms Rajavi also heads the NCRI and remotely led Friday’s event.

In a speech, she called on the EU to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity and for Middle East countries to “expel the mullahs’ regime from the Islamic Co-operation Conference”.

The MEK was listed as a terror organisation by the US between 1997 and 2012 and by the EU between 2002 and 2009. It was delisted after intense lobbying by the MEK.

The NCRI regularly organises rallies near the headquarters of EU institutions, calling on EU leaders to adopt a harsher stance towards Tehran.

A source at the European Parliament, who requested anonymity, said that the NCRI was an influential lobbyist group in Brussels, particularly among right-wing political groups, and that no other Iranian opposition group enjoyed such a presence.

Spanish daily El Pais reported in 2019 that the NCRI had donated more than €1 million between 2013 and 2014 to far-right Spanish political party Vox.

Foreign Policy has reported that the MEK and the NCRI dispute that they are synonymous but that some experts disagree.

In a statement to The National, the group's spokesman Shahin Gobadi reiterated Ms Rajavi’s call to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.

“For their part, Arab nations must support the Iranian people’s valiant struggle to overthrow the ruling theocracy and establish a democratic republic in Iran, because a democratic Iran would ensure peace, stability, and friendship in the turbulent Middle East region,” he said.

Lebanon’s justice minister Ashraf Rifi announced his resignation, blaming political rivals Hizbollah and its allies for the country’s political crisis. Reuters