Tehran’s Condolences Ring Hollow After Decades of Blood and Fire |
When the Iranian foreign ministry took to social media on Sunday to offer condolences to Australia after a murderous terrorist attack on a Jewish celebration in Sydney, the words were smooth, solemn, and utterly devoid of credibility. “Terror and killing of human beings, wherever committed, is rejected and condemned,” declared spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei. It was a statement that might have carried moral weight had it not come from the mouthpiece of one of the world’s most prolific sponsors of terror, anti-semitic violence, and political murder.
Sixteen innocent people were killed in Sydney simply because they were Jewish. The atrocity shocked Australians and horrified decent people everywhere. Yet Tehran’s sudden concern for Jewish lives is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. The Islamic Republic has spent more than four decades demonizing Jews, denying the Holocaust, and exporting violence against Jewish targets across the globe. For such a regime to posture as a defender of humanity is not merely cynical, it is obscene.
Iran’s ruling theocracy was born in blood in 1979 and has never ceased to glorify violence. Inside Iran, the regime has executed, tortured, or disappeared tens of thousands of its own citizens. Jews, Christians, Baha’is, Sunnis, Kurds, and political dissidents have all felt the lash. The massacre of some 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, many of them supporters of the democratic opposition, remains one of the worst crimes against humanity of the late twentieth century. Not a single perpetrator has been held to account.
Beyond its borders, Tehran has refined........