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Politics

Soleimani: “The Saudi Regime is Illegitimate”

March 14, 2016
Reza HaghighatNejad
3 min read
Soleimani: “The Saudi Regime is Illegitimate”
Soleimani: “The Saudi Regime is Illegitimate”

 

In a sharply worded speech, commander of the Iranian expeditionary Qods Force Ghasem Soleimani said Saudi Arabia’s government was “illegitimate” and condemned the country’s military engagement in Yemen. “It has always been the Saudis who have engaged in adventurism against Islam, and against us,” he said.

The speech, delivered to a crowd in the provincial capital of Kerman, southeastern Iran, was the first time Soleimani had explicitly and publicly criticized Saudi Arabia. Prior to this, he had openly condemned various individual Saudi policies, but never attacked the entire political system and the House of Saud outright.

Praising the Iranian political system, the special forces commander said that as the center of Islam and the Shi’a faith, Iran enjoys democracy, while in Saudi Arabia the power is monopolized by one family.

Soleimani used the speech to praise Iran’s political system and to celebrate its military achievement. He described Iran as a “decent, peace-loving, and tolerant” nation and said that, since the 1979 revolution, Iran had never behaved in a hostile manner against Saudi Arabia or other neighboring countries. He dismissed accusations made by some international media and political commentators that Iran’s involvement in the Syrian conflict was reckless and risky. Without a doubt, Soleimani said,  Iran would continued to defend itself, but he stopped short of saying what Iran’s next steps in Syria might be.

Pointing to Iran’s role in fighting ISIS, Soleimani said that Iran had stood up to anti-Islamic forces that were destroying mosques and “trading 2,000 young women among themselves.”

In addition to Iran’s military forces taking defensive action in the region, he said, the Islamic Republic was also defending Sunni Islam from extremist religious groups. He said the heretic groups causing so much unrest in the region were the result of the “fires” that Sunnis had allowed to flare up within their own backyards. And he accused Iran’s enemies of nurturing these groups as part of their agenda to destroy Iran and Shi’ism — hinting that the Saudi government supported ISIS in Iraq.

He also accused Iran’s enemies of promoting a religious war between Sunnis and Shias in the Middle East. Again, this was an unusual comment because, as a general rule, Iranian officials tend to avoid describing any conflict in the region as having a religious basis.

“In which Islamic countries have we ever tried to convert our Sunni brothers to Shia Islam?” he asked, saying that Iran had always protected Sunnis. Over the past decade, a range of critics from Islamic countries in the Middle East, Africa and East Asia have complained that Shia missionaries have set out to convert Sunnis. In some cases, authorities in these countries have even closed down cultural and religious offices affiliated with the Iranian government as a way of confronting these efforts.

Hardliner media consistently accuse Iran’s enemies — usually the United States, the United Kingdom or Israel, but also Saudi Arabia  — of peddling propaganda against Commander Soleimani. For example, an editorial published in the December 6, 2014 issue of Kayhan said Iran’s enemies had described the commander of being a “violent and vengeful figure” and of trying to scare people. “They are aiming to instill fear about his thoughts and his intentions in the people of the region to prevent them from following his ideals, which is Islamism in its purest form.”

Soleimani’s recent speech can be best understood in this context — presenting himself as a courageous leader with Islamic values at the center of everything he says and does. He wants to dispel the image of Iran as a bully or of only having its own interests at heart, and push the image of the Islamic Republic being tolerant and peace-loving, dedicated to securing the interests of all Muslims against extremism.

Soleimani has worked hard to position himself as the right person to deliver this message, even if it is less obvious who that intended audience is supposed to be.

 

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