Posted on 12 February 2020
*Richard Reeve (Chief Executive of Oxford Research Group)
**Marigold Bentley (activist with Quakers)
****Roshan Mohammad Saleh (journalist, specialising in Iranian affairs)
4th February 2020
The complex relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of American go back to seven decades when in 1953 a coup was staged to re-instate the Shah and remove Mosaddeq. The complexity intensified after the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatullah Khomeini. For the past three years these relations have experienced a new low under President Donald Trump who withdrew USA from the Nuclear Deal signed with Iran by the 5+1 group. Last month the two countries came close to war after US drones assassinated eight people at Baghdad Airport including the most senior general, Qassem Soleimani. The security imperatives of this act are far-reaching. After 41 years where are the Iran-US relations heading to? What are the implications for regional security? And what the world can do to avert major military escalation?
Marigold Bentley: A peace perspective on the crisis between war in Iran and the USA. I’m bringing a peace perspective – the other panelists will talk about the current international political situation. I’ve attended quite a few of the evenings here and the panel presentations, and here are some of the things I have noticed. You seem to enjoy being made to feel angry about things in the past, and about what is going on in the contemporary world. It makes me wonder what is the purpose of this? Why do you come?
Most of all I wonder what do you do with the knowledge you gain from these discussion evenings and where do you take your anger? There are loads of things to be angry about at any given time – but the challenge for peace and peacemaking is how we channel anger or dissent into something creative and positive.
Here in London in 2020 we are facing difficult times – social media is whipping up polarization and division which are easy traps to fall into. Unfortunately the UK now has a nationalist and populist government which makes our job as peacemakers all the more difficult. It is our job as peacemakers and as people of faith to articulate our vision of peace and provide steps of how to achieve it – which is why I’m here alongside Richard Reeves of Rethinking Security.
I want you all to leave this evening with a sense that you are not simply absorbers of knowledge, but you are also actors. The conversations about hope and possibility which we have here, must be taken from here into your homes, your families to your communities and your professional lives. You must be upstanders and not bystanders in order to keep us safe.
In times of war, Quakers are active, although we are most active in the pursuit of preventing war in the first place.
For example, WW2, which was a continuation of WW1 only 20 years later, was created by the punishment and humiliation imposed by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, was a challenge for Quakers as WW1 had been. We were active politically in creating the legal right to Conscientious Objection in 1916 when Conscription was introduced (the right to refuse to kill), we were active in medical and practical relief through the Friends Ambulance Unit. Quakers were involved in a huge scale food relief project throughout Germany during the 1920’s and 1930’s which was how Quakers came to be involved in the Kinderstransport to save children who would otherwise have perished in the Holocaust. Quakers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947.
I have a national position for Quakers in Britain and at times I am asked to provide a quote or some text about us, especially in times of national crisis. I have had to say this several times over the past decade as a way to explain ourselves and what we do.
Our religious understanding is that war is failure. Modern warfare is failure on a colossal scale. It is failure in the following ways: failure to love our neighbours as ourselves; failure to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us; failure to seek peace and pursue it; failure to leave no stone unturned in the search for a peaceful solution; failure even to imagine the limitless possibilities of peace that are before us; failure of governments to protect us through dialogue and diplomacy; failure of parliaments to uphold the basic principles of international law and ethical norms which call for utmost restraint in the spilling of blood; failure of military strategies and policies of ‘deterrence’ which are supposedly offered to us as a means to prevent such wars.
Quakers as a faith community with these crucial understandings constantly need to equip ourselves carefully to face those who disagree with us. Those who disagree with us are many and legion and there are probably quite a lot of you in the room.
Since the end of WW2 Quakers have been instrumental in supporting the creation of a large number of Non-Governmental Organisations and augmenting civil society, which we believe can contribute to a better world for everyone. This includes for example the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Conscience the Peace Tax campaign, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Peace Pledge Union, and many others. Quakers and others including academics, practitioners, campaign bodies and peace activists got together in 2014 to ask ourselves the question “how it is, that the UK continues to be a driver of and for war”, and we planned to challenge it. Using materials originally from Quakers across the USA who had their vision for what they called Shared Security, they came up with a plan for changing the narrative on security policy. Richard will explain more of that.
Before I finish I need to say something about PREVENT which I know is of deep concern to many of you, and it is the top of the agenda again as a result of the attack in Streatham. I think you would all share the view that the gift of life we have been given was not given in order that we should take lives. We share the knowledge that safety and security for us all is the responsibility of us all.
I’ll just quote from a letter written for the then Prime Minister David Cameron from Quakers in Britain in 2016 Four years ago. What we said then remains the case.
“ We recognise that government must ensure that citizens of Britain are safe from acts of violence committed by people believing they are religiously required to commit them. We acknowledge this as a shared problem. Through Quakers’ social justice programmes, interfaith work, peace education work and involvement in nonviolent peacebuilding, both in Britain and overseas, we engage actively in creating and promoting such a safe society.
However, we see the Counter Extremism Strategy 2015, and Prevent in particular, having a damaging effect on positive attempts to work for peace.
While the Prevent policy concerns all forms of “violent extremism”, it appears in practice to be exercised most with Muslim children and young people. The Prevent strategy could have been conceived as a new impetus to deliver peace and human rights education, but instead it has been narrowly and negatively drawn as an early-warning system.
We recognise that this negative impact of Prevent may be unintended. Loose or absent definitions of what is “extreme” and what activity falls under the legislation have caused problems at many levels. What is meant by “British Values” is not clearly explained.
It is imperative that difficult topics are discussed as part of an educational programme to prepare young people to engage fully in society as informed citizens. It is essential to discuss challenging topics without being stigmatised or worse, criminalised. It is counter-productive to stifle discourse about what makes for peace. Protest, nonviolent direct action and campaigning are also all legitimate activities, which are part of a civilised society. We object to the conflation of nonviolent and violent extremism in the Counter Extremism Strategy. Quakers in Britain remain committed to nonviolence and we will resist any inappropriate limiting of our work by the legislation.
We remind you of the UK Government’s commitment to peace and peacebuilding in the Convention of the Rights of the Child Article 29, part d: “education of the child shall be directed to: (d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin”. We see these as essential British values and ask you to consider revising Prevent to emphasise peace and human rights education and to reinforce a duty of genuine prevention rather than reaction and surveillance. “
I can inform you that Quakers did make a submission to the planned government review of Prevent which has subsequently been withdrawn as a result of opposition. I am telling you this because we have long experience of legislation on terrorism – I personally have experience of a precursor of this, the Prevention of Terrorism Act which was in place from 1974 1989 and it has had many forms, many of them seeking to prevent violence but unintentionally (or some might say intentionally) criminalising parts of the population. That was in relation to what were known as The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
We will continue to seek peace and pursue means to implement it. I hope you understand how and why it is that Quakers are instrumental in the work of Rethinking Security and now Richard will tell you what that is.
Richard Reeves: We are a secular network open to people of all faiths and none. I have some knowledge about the geopolitics and a bit more about this country the UK and its foreign, security and defence policy. I am not going to talk about Iran and US, that is not my field of expertise. I am going to talk about the UK in the Gulf region and its relations with Iran to an extent. I will talk about how and why the UK and its military are exposed to involvements in conflict between the US and Iran, I will talk about why the UK is so militarily intertwined in the Gulf region and I will talk about what kind of fundamental assumptions underline that presence in the region and finally I will talk about how we could rethink the UK’s security policy and the impact this could have on the region.
It is quite easy to speculate about the causes and responses of conflict when it can seem to be very close as in the last months or years of tit for tat exchanges and hostility between the US and Iran in particular in the Gulf region and Saudi Arabia and Israel. I want to step back from that and talk about the structures of security in the Gulf region and how the UK as an external actor to the region is implicated in that and what it can do about it.
You talked about the 70 or so years of relations between the UK and Iran since 1953. The UK was involved in the coup against Mossedeq in 1953 but its tensions with Iran go back much further than that to the beginning of the 20th century in terms of the oil: the great game in the 19th century of Britain, Russia and others. There was the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran in the war years. I am not going into the history of it all. The UK is deeply involved in the region with Iran and also with US interests but with some differences. The UK is closely aligned with US interests in the Gulf region. It does not have quite the same post 1979 history nor trajectory as the US. It does not have the same tensions as the US with the hostage crisis.
What then is the UK’s exposure to involvement in war and the Gulf.? It is worth saying that the UK does not have binding mutual defence relationships with any of the regional states. Unlike in NATO or in South East Asia with Malaysia and New Zealand the UK is not obligated to be involved in wars if they start in the Gulf region. At least this appears to be the case but there are deep relationships with each of the six Arab Gulf states which have implications for the UK’s involvement.
There is a large royal navy presence in the Gulf – the Persian Arabian Gulf and also the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. There is a large and fairly new or revived British naval presence in Bahrain. There is a logistical support base as it is called in Dokum Oman just outside the Gulf. There are currently ten royal navy war ships deployed in the Gulf, frigates destroyers, mine tankers etc. That is about a quarter to a third of the operational Royal Navy. So you can see the importance to the UK of that presence. It is a very significant commitment.
There are also 400 UK army instructors in Iraq, another 300 – 400 embedded with the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and others. There are air bases in Qatar, in Dubai and sometimes in Oman and Kuwait as well.
Those forces do not operate alone. They are deeply entwined with the much larger US forces. They have a base there, they have a joint command with the naval task forces from Bahrain and since three or four days ago it is the UK which commands technically US naval forces in the Gulf for a short period on rotation. The US bases its strategic bombers, potentially nuclear bombers B52’s in Diego Garcia which is contested British territory outside the Gulf region but which could be used in any conflict with Iran. And the UK is a symbolic and some would say a softer target in the event of hostilities.
Why then is the UK so involved militarily in the Gulf region? It has been there for 150 years or so. It began deep in the history of the British empire and it is in some ways an offshoot of the British colonisation of India. Since the last thirty or forty years there have been two operational reasons.
The first one, Operation Shader which is the action against the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria is really the evolution of a presence targeting Iraq which has been there since at least 1990 and the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. It evolved since the first Gulf War in 1991 with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The air campaign throughout the 1990s against Iraq and since 2014 the anti ISIS campaign.
The second one is the maritime dimension which is called Operation Kipeon in the Arabian Gulf and the seas around it is really a continuous presence since the 1980s since the Iran-Iraq war. There have been various reasons proclaimed for it in the last 20 years including dimensions of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, anti piracy in Somalia and so on. It is a fairly continuous presence. It looked to contain Iraq on the one hand and to a considerable extent Iran on the other. But Iran has been of less interest to the UK than the US and Israel.
The UK also talks about national security and strategic priorities since 2015 under three headings to describe how Britain thinks about national security and its place in the world: protecting our people, projecting our influence and promoting our prosperity. It is important to note that it is about UK security. It is not about the regional security of the Gulf nor is it about local security. Who our interests are is important to explain.
There are some important assumptions that underlie this kind of national security policy which I think should be contested. When we begin to contest these and think about them we can think about the role the UK plays in the Gulf region and how we can change that for the better.
Number one. The UK interests are important and paramount. The interests of the Arabs, Iranians and others in the region are much less important if important at all. Second of course is the global dependence on oil and gas particularly that exported from the Gulf region. For the UK it is not a simple idea that we need to import oil and gas from the Gulf. We don’t. We import a significant share of our gas as liquefied natural gas from Qatar. Otherwise our oil and gas comes primarily from the North Sea and from Norway. It is fundamental in our assumptions that we seek to control supplies of oil and gas to allies, partners and even our rivals. Most Gulf oil and gas goes to Asia. UK oil companies are part of that. And finally securing inward investment from the Gulf to the UK is incredibly important to our domestic economy, particularly here in London.
The third assumption is that we need to perpetuate some neo imperial relationships with the Gulf Arab states. These are more important than the human rights of the people in that region. There is an ingrained assumption that democracy is dangerous in the Middle Eastern context. It is a radical revolutionary destabilising force. Perhaps a collorary of that is the preoccupation with a more stabilising form of government than local democracy.
Fourthly there is a British obsession with projecting power and projecting influence to control territory and resources. In the current world order it is more difficult to do that in terms of territory. The 2003 occupation of Iraq crossed the line in that regard but it happened. More acceptable in that regard is to occupy what we call the global commons, for example the oceans and the seas and the trade routes that come from the Gulf for example to Europe and Asia.
Fifth there is a belief in the strategic important of selling weapons to markets in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar. Sixth there is the fundamental assumption that the UK needs to be a strategic partner, a junior partner of the USA and have a relatively uncritical attitude toward the USA. Even before Brexit there was a need for a trade deal with the US.
And finally there is unequal application of the nuclear non proliferation treaty on weapons of mass destruction and non proliferation regimes with regard to Iran relative to Israel. So these are some of the big assumptions that underlie the British military presence in the Gulf. How can we rethink UK security approaches in the region?
First of all we can stop thinking just in terms of the national security of the UK people’s interests and start thinking about shared security. So what are the implications of our security policy? How does it impact on people where actions take place in matters that people for example in Iraq and Afghanistan are injured and displaced and have their livelihoods destroyed as well as and more than the British personnel are killed. The people need to be involved in security policy whether they are British people we want to see in security policy or the people affected by the policy.
Secondly we need to radically cut our dependence on oil and gas. This is so fundamental to the security problems, geopolitics and rivalries in the Gulf region that it barely warrants saying. Even if there were not the climate breakdown crisis that there is, there would be an imperative to make that shift.
Thirdly we need to assume that democratic governments and rights are fundamental international rights that apply to all people. We need to act as if they are essential to stability which they are and stop seeing them as a threat to our own interests in Europe and the West.
We need to assert a genuine rule of international law. We talk a lot about the international based order and the UK and the US and others upholding that. That international order, international law is very, very important and fundamental but it needs to be upheld not selectively but consistently and with the input of all actors, including those in the Middle East and Gulf regions. And that applies to the management of the oceans, the global commons as well as on land.
At home we need to rethink and reframe our arms industries which have become extremely dependent on exports and export subsidies to the Gulf region. I think to a considerable extent that is happening beyond the current generation but it is paramount to disentangling ourselves from many of the regimes problematic actors in the Gulf.
We also need to think about asserting our independence from US strategy and interests and that has become much more clear in the Trump era through going its own way and not consulting its allies and also because of its fundamental disregard for rights and international law and values. That said, that is quite true of successive US regimes and UK ought to be able to stand aside from that if we are adopting a more sustainable progressive just approach to national security.
Finally we need to be really active in terms of promoting regional institutions that involve all the actors in the Middle East and Gulf region in managing their own security because it has been devolved to international proxies or assumed international proxies over decades and decades and that means Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel all are actors talking to each other to manage their security and moving towards a weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East and fairer application of international rules.
So in summary finally there is a lot the UK can do to fundamentally rethink its own role. And that is not just something we can do this year. It is going to take years and decades to disengage ourselves from a very problematic engagement with the region. But it is also something that is not just a UK responsibility or a US responsibility. It is something that has to involve and be the responsibility of the local space actors and people’s to manage that security in the long term.
Roshan Mohammad Saleh: Today I want to talk about General Soleimani and the ramifications of that assassination. Kind of as a prelude to that what I want to talk about I should introduce myself: I am not Iranian, I am not even a Shia, I am Sunni but I am somebody who in my childhood was inspired by the values of the Islamic revolution in Iran by the fact that it was Islamic and by the fact that it was pro Palestinian. I think that one of Imam Khomeini’s first acts was to close down the Israeli embassy and open a Palestinian embassy. And it was anti imperialistic because Iran was America’s play land. So these are the three values that I held on to over all these years. I have worked with Iranians in my capacity as a journalist for many years, especially at press tv and visited Iran several times now. I speak to Iranians of all different views. I am known as someone who is generally supportive of Iran but I am not completely uncritical either so hopefully I can be quite honest tonight in what I am going to say.
So from a historical point of view – I won’t go into this very deeply but Islamic Iran from 1979 onwards really has been under some incredible pressures since that time. There was a war imposed on it during the 1980s which killed a million people in Iraq and Iran obviously supported by the West.
It was an attempt to strangle the Islamic republic at birth but in fact it solidified the Islamic Republic. Many Iranians now say that perhaps Islamic Iran would not exist today if they had not gone through that difficult eight years or so. Obviously it has been under continuous sanctions which is an act of war – the very imposition of sanctions.
Iran has military bases surrounding it from all sides in the Persian Gulf in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many enemies of Iran say that in the Iraq war Iran was in cahoots with the Americans because they came up with the whole plan because Saddam Hussein fell on one side and the Taliban fell on the other side. That is a popular conspiracy theory among my fellow Sunnis. But you also have to understand that at the time Iran was faced with the prospect of hundreds of thousands of American troops on one border and hundreds of thousands of American troops on the other border. So it was not quite an appealing prospect.
Obviously Iran turned the situation around through diplomacy and military action. As a journalist I would say that Iran has been continually demonised in the West and also in the Arab world. If you look at the popularity ratings for Iran in the West and also in the Arab world it is very low. There are certain exceptions like Palestine and Lebanon which have different contexts and Syria now. But generally the ratings for Iran across the Arab world are very low as they are across the West. It does not surprise me whatsoever when you look at the anti Iran propaganda that is pumped out and the anti Shia propaganda that is pumped out every day in countries across the region. People are susceptible to that.
I would say that the worst perpetrator of anti-Iran propaganda is the Times followed closely by the Guardian. The right wing and left wing both demonise Iran from different perspectives. Human rights is a stick to beat Iran with again and again and again.
But despite these considerable pressures Iran has triumphed. It has been a success certainly compared to its neighbours. Iran has to compare itself to its neighbours rather than to Western countries because that is its immediate context. It is a relatively stable country. Anyone who visits it will testify to that. It has a strong military and ann educated population. It has allies around the world. It is portrayed as being isolated but ultimately it is allied with two world super powers China and Russia. There are allies in Africa and South America and it is not completely isolated as it is often portrayed to be.
Iran has had a defence strategy since the Iraq-Iraq war which is not to fight wars on its own soil. So if it is going to confront America or Israel it will confront them in Syria, Lebanon or Palestine. What it does not want is to confront them in Iran itself and this has been a successful policy from an Iranian point of view. You could argue not particularly from a Lebanese or a Syrian point of view but from an Iranian point of view.
It is often said even by Iran’s enemies that the Iranians are playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. It is even acknowledged by their enemies that they are experts in geo politics and they are in a very tough neighbourhood.
The JCPO and the Iran Nuclear Deal was a triumph for Iran. They ultimately got sanctions relief without giving away their forward defense policy. They did not give up Palestine, they did not give up Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria all the regional allies etc. They curbed their nuclear programme a little bit. It was controversial in Iran itself. There were many people who did not agree with it and felt that the negotiations with the USA were a betrayal of the Islamic revolution’s initial values. Overall it was considered to be a triumph in Iran and around the world.
Obviously Mr Trump disagreed and tore it up. One day I think his policy is to slowly pull out of the Middle East and pivot towards other areas of the world, China etc He had a lot of anti-war rhetoric before he was president but if you look at his record in government there were a few missile strikes against Syria but they were limited. So if you look at his rhetoric which can be very bellicose at times in terms of actions he had not taken massive steps from an interventionist point of view until about a month ago when the rule book went out of the window. And I am thinking this guy is worse than Bush with the audacious assassinations of General Soleimani literally putting the region on the brink of war. We were as close to it as we have been in many decades.
The JCPOA pull out has definitely hurt Iran. Oil sales have collapsed and that is the main revenue source for Iran. The currency is very volatile, prices are going up. There is a shortage of medicines and it is not a good situation there is no doubt. The Iranians may well put a brave face on it. It has hurt Iran but it has not brought Iran to its knees. I will get on to that later.
I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago Genocide Memorial Day organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. An Iranian professor was speaking about the sanctions on Iran. He described it as war crime and said that the US has acted as a rogue state and it should be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court for genocide and war crimes. We do not often think of sanctions as war crimes but they kill people and they are killing people in Iran as we speak. Ultimately it is a deliberate policy to hurt civilians in the hope that they will blame their own government rather than the countries that are imposing the sanctions and rise up against their own government and overthrow it. This is international terrorism.
But it hasn’t brought Iran to its knees. We saw huge demonstrations after General Soleimani’s assassination. In a way they were perhaps the most convincing manifestation of the people’s support for the government, for the Islamic republic in many years. There were millions of people on the streets. The small anti government demonstrations got more traction in the Western media but it was literally thousands of people versus hundreds of people.
So the propaganda that we are constantly sold that the Iranian government is holding its people hostage is patently false. Anyone who spends any time in Iran will understand that. It is a very educated population and they are invested in the ideals of the Islamic revolution. There are secularists in Iran. There are Iranians who do not like the government, who do not like the Islamic government and they are the ones who speak great English and they are the ones who get their voices amplified in the mainstream media and tell the West what it wants to hear. But ultimately they are in a minority and they are not representative of the vast majority of the Iranian people. I would say putting a ball park figure on it I that at least 80 percent of the Iranian people are supportive of the Islamic republic but there are critics of the direction of the Islamic republic within that 80 percent without a doubt.
I should also say that there is a lot of internal subterfuge going on: Israel, the West Saudi Arabia and the CIA are working on minorities in Iran especially the Kurds, Sunnis etc they are really trying to work on them because they see them as possible sources of opposition to the Islamic Republic.
So getting on to General Soleimani’s assassination. Here I am going to try and be quite honest. I feel that what happened was a short term win for the United States. They took out possibly the second most powerful person in Iran in an audacious assassination. They took him out without Iran responding in kind. But they crossed a red line and they broke Iranian deterrence to a certain extent by that assassination but it worries me what that presage for the future.
Iran did not respond. They took out a US airbase. Took out is going to far. They hit a US air base without a response. That was the first attack by a state on a US airbase since the second world war. America did not respond to that attack so it is an acknowledgement of Iran’s power as well. But at the same time it is fair to say that Iran and Iranian officials have said they did not try to kill any US soldiers. It could escalate completely out of control. Trump had threatened to bomb mainland Iran and the Iranians stepped back from the precipice.
There were massive demonstrations at General Soleimani’s funeral. The Iranians were trusting for revenge and the action against the US airbase in Iraq fell short of what many were expecting. I would say this is a short term win for the USA. They have certainly demonstrated their power. Long term obviously Iran is focused on getting rid of the American presence in the region. That is their stated goal and if they do that over many years we can look at it and say it was an Iranian win.
Ayatollah Khameini has shown immense geo strategic wisdom over many years and has got it right on most occasions if not every single occasions even when all of us questioned Iranian strategy.
So in terms of the future the interests of America and Iran collide. If you look at all the arenas in the region whether it is Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen etc etc, Iraq Syria they are on opposing sides. Occasionally their interests coincide like in Iraq where they were on the same side against Daesh but that is not the same as being in a strategic alliance like Israel is with the United States or Saudi Arabia.
Ultimately while the region remains energy rich it remains a strategic region so I can’t see an American pullout any time soon. And obviously while Israel exists and Saudi Arabia exists these are countries that are egging on America to bomb Iran. They would like nothing better than America to literally go to war with Iran. That remains a problem as well in terms of regional peace.
From Iran’s point of view Ayatollah Khameini is getting old. The succession does worry me. Will the succession be as wise as the Islamic leaders who have taken Iran up to this point? The ideals of the Islamic revolution are 40 years plus now old. Will the new generation which has not experienced direct war – and that is why a lot of people in Iran felt a war was needed despite the pain that was involved – to revive the values of Islamic Iran but it did not happen and a lot of Iranians are more concerned about living standards than struggling for the ideals I spoke about. Are they more concerned about living standards then the ideals of the Islamic revolution? Iran stands for something. Will it stand for something in future years if the current trajectory goes down its present path. Ultimately it is a challenge for Iran to maintain that.
The foreign minister has been calling for years now for a regional meeting between the major powers in the region: Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran and the secondary powers Qatar, Egypt and others. That is what is needed literally for the countries of the region, and the major powers of the region to sit down, to discuss their differences and commonalities and take the heat out of situation like Syria and Iraq.
I would actually like Iran’s military presence to end in places like Iraq and Syria but it can ultimately end only if Saudi Arabia pulls out and Turkey pulls out. It can’t be one side pulling out and the other side staying. So there has to be some kind of deal. These powers are part of the region, they are indigenous to the region and they will be for many years to come whereas the Americans are foreign invaders. The UK is a foreign invader. How dare it have a base in the Persian Gulf. Imagine an Iranian base in the English Channel or the Gulf of Mexico. What an outcry that would cause. Just think about it. These are countries on the other side of the world which have military bases and threaten and project their power in a region of the world which is not threatening them and does not want them there. It is absolutely outrageous but we take Western hegemony for granted.
I want to conclude with something completely unrelated. Just a final word on the crackdown of freedom of speech as is happening in the West. Press TV was taken off air about six years ago or even longer than that. It was taken off the Sky platform. It was obviously a political decision even if it was not presented that way.
Press TV’s UK U tube page has been taken down. That is eight years of work, several videos with millions of views etc etc. Just wiped off without a reason. Google did not give us a reason. Facebook and twitter are bound to do the same things. We have Iranian activists and media organisations systematically being taken off American social media sites with such a massive reach.
We have the IHRA definition of anti Semitism which is having a chilling effect on freedom of speech in this country. We have pro-Israeli organisations and individuals having the gall to call us anti Semites. No one can get away with it because according to the IHRA definition of anti Semitism we are anti Semites simply because we have a political issue with the Israeli regime even if we say nothing against Jews as a race or a religion. Of course we should never say anything against Jews as a race or a religion.
Even if we do not do that but if we criticise Israel in a harsh way and question the way it was founded, its racism, its terrorism, its occupation we are anti Semites. Even now we cannot hold events at universities.
There is prevent. As a Muslim parent I tell my children do not talk about politics in school – do not say a word about politics. If you are asked your opinion about a Middle Eastern issue shut up. Do not say a word because you risk being haled before a counter terrorism officer. You risk being stigmatized. So even without a prevent officer getting involved in the lives of Muslim pupils or patients or whatever there is this chilling effect on freedom of speech and there is self censorship. We are self censoring all the time. We are scared of being kicked off face book or twitter.
Ultimately we have to create social media platforms which are not dependent on the West, that can’t be shut down and the lights cannot be turned off just like that and they will be. Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders do not care. They only care when the BBC gets censored. They do not care when foreign media gets censored. There is a double standard and there is hypocrisy. Ultimately we have to create our own platforms.
It used to be a free for all. There was freedom of speech then. Now there is a definite reason to leave facebook, twitter and U tube because they are censoring alternative views and long term creating our platforms own platforms. It is going to take a long time but we need to think long term.
* Richard Reeves Richard Reeve has been the Coordinator of Rethinking Security, a network of NGOs, academics, practitioners and activists working to reframe UK security narratives and policy, since October 2019. Previously, he worked for six years with Oxford Research Group directing its Sustainable Security Programme, and developing its peace building work in Yemen and the Middle East. From 2009 to 2012 he worked with International Alert as its Head of Research and managing security and justice projects in Liberia, South Sudan, Nepal and elsewhere. As an Africa-focused conflict researcher, he has also been a fellow of Chatham House Africa Programme and King’s College London’s War Studies department, an editor and analyst with Jane’s Information Group and other risk consultancies, and worked with the African Union, ECOWAS and Arab League. Since 2015, his research and advocacy has focused primarily on UK defence and security policy, including military posture and presence, military expenditure, and climate security. He has degrees from SOAS (Law), LSE (International Relations) and Edinburgh (History; Politics).
** Marigold Bentley is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has worked on behalf of Quakers nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Her work has included service work in the Occupied Territories and Egypt during the 1980’s, and at the Quaker United Office in New York. During the 1990’s she worked in peace education, particularly in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. She currently Head of Peace Programmes and Faith Relations for Quakers in Britain. She is a member of the Rethinking Security Group.
*** Joshua Megan is a Researcher in Middle Eastern affairs. He has appeared on TV shows discussing the Middle East. In addition to his degree in Geography, Joshua has engaged in topics relating to the Middle East and has first-hand observations on some issues like Iran which he had visited.
****Roshan Muhammed Salih is journalist at LBP and editor at 5Pillars. He holds BA Hons French and Philosophy from Staffordshire University (August 1994), Postgraduate Certificate in Journalism from London School of Journalism (August 1998 ) and Postgraduate Certificate of Education from Exeter University (August 1996 ). He worked for two years as a teacher in a secondary school before re-training as a journalist. He started out in local newspapers in the UK before moving into TV production, making political, lifestyle and travel documentaries for mainstream British channels. Roshan then moved to Al Jazeera English’s new website as a journalist in Doha before returning to the UK to become head of news at Islam Channel. He then became head of news in London for Press TV, a position he held for five years. He is now a documentary maker and run a British Muslim website. His goals are (mainly) to write and report about the Muslim world.
