Iran has been acting as a regional bully in recent years and it seems like it has achieved a lot of strategic gains through illegitimate interventions in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. In recent days, Iran has sought to open a new arena for this behavior that is internationally unusual, promoting its claim on two more UAE islands (in addition to the three occupied islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa) – Ariana and Zirco.
Member of the Commission on Security and Foreign Policy in the Iranian Shura Council, Massoud Goudarzi, announced that the Iranian Foreign Ministry prepared the necessary documentation for the claim. In an interview with Mizan, an Iranian Parliament’s website, he said there are documents proving Iran’s ownership of these islands, and that Tehran will defend its “right”. “We found documents proving these two islands ‘occupied’ by the UAE belong to Iran. We will file an international judicial complaint through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, said Goudarzi, who claimed that the Iranians remained silent way too much about the UAE claims, instigated by Saudi Arabia and other nations, over the islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, adding that “they [the UAE] should know that Iran will respond to these allegations. […] and they will not get an inch of these islands and Iran would get back all its islands occupied by Emiratis and others because of the indolence of former Pahlavi and Qajar dynasties in Iran.”
Similar allegations were made by Iranian MPs close to the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards. Two years ago, former deputy chairman of the Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy in Iranian Parliament, Mansour Haghighatpour, an anti-Arab nationalist, made the exact same allegations that the two islands are Iran’s and this occupation was met with silence but this does not mean that the Emirates can keep disrespecting Iran.
Can you believe Iran kept silent on the “Emirati occupation” of the islands over the years, and just stood by to watch oil extraction leaping in Zirco Island? What about your strong-arm policy in the region over the past years?
For shame! The clerical regime practices conning for a hobby and bullying as a profession, trying to rob two islands from a neighboring sovereign State.
If the mullahs’ regime is suicidal and wants to open a new front of regional conflict, it will be the only loser. The UAE and the GCC are able to fend off any Iranian attack on their sovereignty. Iran is well aware of that, today more than it ever was. The mullahs should think twice before they take the low road, and involve the Revolutionary Guard folks who think hunting for a few hundred Daesh members in the deserts of Iraq can compare to occupying the territory of a sovereign State capable of protecting itself.
If Iran can prove claims over the islands, it should provide evidence for the other three islands occupied by force since 1971. Only international arbitration can return rights to their holders, not media and political rhetoric.
The mullahs think they can pressure the UAE to stop claiming the three occupied islands. Such allegations cannot convince the international community. Everyone knows that the United Arab Emirates demanded Iran to resolve the issue of the three UAE islands either through direct negotiations or through international arbitration, but the Iranians avoided the issue for decades and repeat expressions such as “misunderstandings”, because their claims have no historical or legal base.
The Iranian regime will not change. Their calls for good neighborliness and reconciliation are motivated by taqiya ideology, to buy time until they assault other countries in the region. It is an expansionist regime that cannot co-exist with its neighbors, only knows the language of force, and is on the wrong side of history. The world must work together to free the Iranian people from a rogue and irrational regime.
