Green's ignore the vileness of Iran

Think of South Africa some years ago, when under apartheid it tortured political prisoners, suppressed free speech, shot unarmed civilians on the street, and was developing its own nuclear weapons programme. Think also of how you could pretty much guarantee all those in the Green party would have protested loudly against all of this, with pretty good justification.

Now of course we have Iran. Iran has a nuclear programme that it has consistently refused to allow inspections at the level of transparency required by the International Atomic Energy Agency under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Green Party believes in the abolition of nuclear weapons, so you’d think it would regard as a priority stopping new countries acquiring them – well apparently not. I haven’t seen a single protest or call by any Green MPs or letter to the Iranian embassy requesting that Iran fully comply with IAEA requirements, given that 183 other non-nuclear weapons states seem to be able to do so. No, well apparently its not important.

Iran’s President repeatedly calls for the abolition of the state of Israel, using rhetoric of annihilation. Iran funds and trains Hamas and Hizbollah, which have both repeatedly attacked Israel and are both committed to wiping Israel off the map. Iran also funds, trains and arms part of the insurgency in Iraq, committed to installing an Islamist regime there. However, the Green party isn’t too concerned about warmongering against Israel, or fighting secular and US led coalition forces in Iraq, is it now?

So what does an Iranian Islamist regime look like? Well Iran executes teenage girls who admit they have been raped. By no measure of civilisation can this be seen as anything less than vile and immoral. It also executes teenage boys for having consensual sexual relations with unmarried legal age girls. It used underage soldiers for mine clearing during its war with Iraq. Iran imprisons though who “insult Islam”, and who call for a secular liberal democratic state – you know, like the one the Green party likes to support, or indeed like the United States.

So when the USA confronts Iran, because it has failed for some time to meet its international obligations to the IAEA, including failing to fulfill conditions laid out in relevant UN Security Council resolutions, and notes that Iran through military means is promoting its own vile form of Islamist tyranny, what does the Green Party say?

Frogblog asks John Key “Would he agree that Iran was “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror”? Many would say that the US was, citing their financial and technical support for Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein prior to turning against them."

At best, this is dredging back to the 1980s, during the Cold War, when not this US President, nor the previous one, nor the one before that (but the one before that) started providing support for Hizbollah’s campaign against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (not quite Osama Bin Laden but certainly Islamists). This was Jimmy Carter that started this!! The US also provided support to Saddam Hussein against Islamist Iran, which is difficult to defend except on the “enemy’s enemy is your friend doctrine”. However let’s note that the US has consistently opposed the Iranian Islamist regime from day one. It has been some Presidents ago since the US supported Saddam Hussein.

Of course, Green MP Keith Locke was one of those cheerleading the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the time (hey they like to blame the USA today for something that happened over 20 years ago, why not blame them for supporting murderers then?). This was a brutal imperialistic occupation, but somehow the Greens DON'T say that Russia was a leading sponsor of terror - of course not, that was "back then" during the Cold War, we don’t worry about that now – Russia is forgiven for the decades of misery its Marxist-Leninist dictatorship inflicted upon hundreds of millions around the world.

Moreover, the Greens effectively apply moral equivalency between Iran and the USA - where there is individual freedom on a grand scale compared to Iran, where women do have equal legal rights, where there is a high degree of freedom of speech and a secular state. It is dishonest and discredits their claims to be advocates for "international justice, peace and human rights".

The Green party likes to claim it takes the moral highground on human rights internationally, but when it is a state the US targets (for whatever reason) it starts finding excuses for it.

The Green (declared) beliefs in feminism, freedom of speech, secular government, liberal democracy and human rights are set to one side, along with its agenda against nuclear weapons, or even the belief in peace, because Iran is being exposed for what it is by the USA. The blind anti-Americanism is such that the Greens NEVER protest against the torture and executions carried out by Iran, and NEVER protest Iran's failure to be transparent with the IAEA (even though you profess to believe in multilateralism).

They are no different from the old fashioned Soviet type anti-Americans of the Cold War. If USA confronts another country it's baad, so a blind eye is turned to what Iran does. I for one would be thrilled if the Iranian Islamist state was overthrown, I would also prefer an airstrike against Iranian nuclear facilities over an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel, or an Iranian supplied nuclear device for terrorists to use in the West.

The question really is, what will it take for the Greens to protest against Iran's horrendous human rights record and its nuclear programme? How many have to die due to the Iranian state deliberately engaging in murder of its own citizens? What answers will the Greens have if Iran tests a nuclear weapon in the next 2-3 years, or if it implies that it has one?