Iran has a statehood dilemma

Opinion: October 20, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Nima Tamaddon

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

WASHINGTON

Iran’s attempt to portray itself as the champion of the Palestinian cause has suffered a serious setback in recent months in the face of the seismic political shifts that swept across the Middle East.

Few could ignore the fact that the uprising sweeping the Arab world since the beginning of the year bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the democratic protests that followed the disputed Iranian presidential election in 2009, which Tehran brutally put down.

And now, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Iran, is the target of worldwide condemnation as he uses force against protesters in his country.

Making life even more difficult for Tehran was the demand by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that the United Nations recognize Palestinian statehood along the borders that existed before the 1967 war.

Such a two-state solution flies in the face of Iran’s longtime demand that Israel disappear.

So, when Tehran hosted the fifth International Intifada Conference recently, many wondered how Iran would reconcile its position with the policy outlined by the Palestinians themselves.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used his speech to the conference to insist that the two-state solution would damage the Palestinian cause, since such an agreement would imply the acceptance of Israel’s existence.

Surprisingly, however, Khamenei toned down his anti-Israeli rhetoric, compared with his remarks at previous conferences.

Once it was ‘treason’

In 1991, for example, Kha–menei slammed the international community’s Madrid peace conference, calling it “treason” for which its participants would be punished. Ten years later, Khamenei suggested that Israel had inflated the number of deaths during the Holocaust. And in 2006, Tehran announced that it was stepping up aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

The muted rhetoric at this year’s conference indicates that Iran’s leadership is struggling with how to proceed. How, for example, should Iran vote in the General Assembly should the issue of recognition for a Palestinian state arise? Can Iran really present itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause if it opposes a resolution a majority of Palestinians support? At best, Khamenei hoped to put off being forced to articulate a clear policy by proposing that the future of any Palestinian state should be decided by a referendum among all Palestinians. Such a suggestion ignores the fact that Abbas has already presented his proposal to the United Nations.

Nor could Khamenei bring himself to acknowledge Abbas’ argument that U.N. recognition would make it possible to press for the prosecution of Israelis at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes relating to their offensive in Gaza.

One would have thought that Khamenei would have championed such an idea, given that he offered a similar suggestion back in 2009.

Nima Tamaddon is a writer who formerly worked as editor on the Iran Program for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.