Rouge is relative
By Guive Mirfendereski
October 1997
The Iranian
When the United States government overthrew the Allende regime in Chile, the then President Ford was asked about the propriety of U.S. actions. He replied "everyone does it," as if he was either invoking or coining a rule of customary international law.
Some months ago, a German court implicated certain officials of the Iranian government in the killing of a number of Kurdish "dissidents" on German soil. An indignant Iran recalled its ambassadors; the self-righteous European Community countries, except Greece, recalled theirs and a first-class mess has ensued as to who should go back to their post first.
The United States seized upon the German verdict to rub Iran's nose further into dirt, pointing to yet one more reason why it regarded Iran as a rogue state -- as if it were not enough that Iran had been derided already for having a death warrant on Salman Rushdie, allegedly sponsoring terrorism, and assassinating the regime's opponents.
In the week of October 5, 1997, the Israeli government was caught with its pants down in Jordan, where three Israeli operatives sought to assassinate the spiritual leader of the Hamas. Extra-territorial security action or state-sponsored terrorism? Two days later President Clinton sidestepped the question altogether when he stated that Israeli law, unlike American law, did not prohibit overseas assassinations.
Presumably, as Iranian law apparently does not prohibit the government from conducting assassinations abroad either, is it not therefore logical to infer that Israel too is as rogue of a state as Iran? President Clinton instead has called the media's attention to his desire to get the peace process moving again.
What the United States' own time-honored interventionist and homicidal foreign policy, Israel's long-standing covert operations against its enemies aborad, and Iran's methods of dealing with dissidents show is that when it comes to one's national interest, every country is a rogue state -- an example of a pot calling a kettle black.
Related links
* THE IRANIAN Opinion
section
* Iran News
* Complete list of Iranian
online media
About the author
Guive Mirfendereski is a corporate and international lawyer in private practice in Newton, Massachusetts. He has held adjunct appointmnets at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplmacy and Brandeis University. He has advised foreign governments and international organizations on commercial law revision, privatization, and legal reform.
He holds a JD from Boston College Law School; a PhD in inetnational law, an MA in law and diplomacy, an MA in international affairs from the Fletcher School, and a BA in government from Georgetown University.
His recent publications include: "The Toponymy of the Tonb Islands," published in "Iranian Journal" (Summer/Fall 1996), and "The Ownership of the Tonb Islands: A Legal Analysis," a chapter in "Small Islands, Big Politics" (1996 St. Martin's Press, New York).
|
|
|
