RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Monday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said that “Iran is too large a player, too important a player in this region, to simply leave in isolation.” He also said that Iran is a major regional player that can be an “ally in fighting terrorism” — but that London must “tread carefully” in its relationship with Tehran.

The remarks came as Hammond was visiting Tehran to reopen the British embassy there. Countries have been flocking to Iran following the signing of the nuclear deal and are falling over themselves to get their piece of the Iranian multibillion-dollar pie.

According to British newspaper The Guardian, Hammond questioned whether Iran was really committed to destroying Israel, claiming that this had been the position of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s predecessor, and Rouhani had a “more nuanced approach.”

When challenged about the calls by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for the destruction of Israel, Hammond said this rhetoric might not reflect Iran’s real intentions.

“We’ve got to distinguish between revolutionary sloganizing and what Iran actually does in the conduct of its foreign policy,” he said. “We’ve got to, as we do with quite a number of countries, distinguish the internal political consumption rhetoric from the reality of the way they conduct their foreign policy.”

This is almost too precious, albeit unsurprising, as it is the same rhetoric that has been flowing from European powers to legitimize to themselves how it is that they can do business with some of the worst regimes in the world.

However, it would seem that the British Foreign Office does not care too much about the “reality of the way” that Iran conducts its foreign policy. As a matter of fact, the “reality of the way” that Iran conducts its foreign policy has been consistent with its declared goal of destroying Israel for several decades now. One would have to be both blind and deaf to have missed this fact, which makes the statements of the British Foreign Secretary even more absurd.

However, Iran was very quick to do all it could to lay to rest any confusion that Hammond’s remarks may have caused. Hossein Sheikholeslam, the international affairs adviser to the Iranian parliamentary speaker, was upset with Hammond’s remarks and assured Iranians that Tehran’s views on Israel have not changed in the least.

“Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan,” he told Iran’s Fars news agency.

Claiming that Iran can be “an ally in fighting terrorism” is as absurd as allowing it to inspect its own nuclear sites. Iran is among the leading state sponsors of terrorism in the world, its specialty being terrorism against Israel and against Jews around the world. Even the British Foreign Office is aware of this. Iran actively supports a plethora of terrorist groups, among them Islamic Jihad, which fired rockets from Syria into northern Israel last week, and Hamas and Hezbollah, which fight its proxy wars against Israel. Iran not only sponsors these groups financially, but is intricately interwoven with them, supplying them with weapons, training, expertise and personnel.

However, the British Foreign Office, which historically has never been a great friend of Israel, is not the only thing that seems off in Britain. An online petition to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes” upon his arrival on an official visit to London in September has taken off recently, and has garnered nearly 85,000 signatures. The popularity of the petition prompted the British government to release a statement, which made it clear that under British and international law “visiting heads of foreign governments, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have immunity from legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained.” In the U.K., a petition with 100,000 signatures must be considered for a debate in parliament.

It is interesting that those 85,000 concerned British citizens and self-declared champions of human rights who want to see the Israeli prime minister arrested for imaginary “war crimes” do not have the smallest issue with the U.K. doing business with the Iranian regime.

It does not bother them in the least that Iran is the second most prolific executioner in the world after China, according to Amnesty International’s latest global death penalty report. Most recently, on Wednesday morning, Iran hanged the Kurdish political prisoner Behrouz Alkhani. Amnesty International wrote on its website Tuesday, the day before the execution, that Alkhani had been placed in solitary confinement in preparation for his execution the next day, despite the fact that he was still awaiting the outcome of a Supreme Court appeal.

“The Iranian authorities must urgently halt Behrouz Alkhani’s execution. Carrying out a death sentence while a prisoner is awaiting the outcome of his appeal is a serious violation of both Iranian and international law, and is an affront to justice,” said Said Boumedouha, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.

“Behrouz Alkhani faced a grossly unfair trial where basic safeguards such as the right to access a lawyer were ignored. He also says he was tortured and otherwise ill-treated in custody. The authorities must immediately stop this execution and grant him a fair retrial, in proceedings that are in line with international standards, without delay. … The authorities have already carried out nearly 700 executions in Iran so far this year. Allowing Behrouz Alkhani’s death sentence to be implemented will only leave them with more blood on their hands.”

Iran carried out 700 executions in seven months, but there are no British petitions for the lives or wellbeing of Iranian citizens and prisoners.

Shakespeare would agree that there is something rotten in the state of England.

Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst living in Israel.