Who says the Iranian regime is run by dour old men with no sense of humor? Wrong! Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has just written a screamingly funny letter (dated March 26th) to Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, and asked that it be widely distributed. I’m happy to oblige. Laugh along with me and Javad as we parse our way through the highlights.
The letter portrays Iran as the innocent victim of state-sponsored terrorism, beginning with “the shocking news about the possible murder of one of the five Iranian border guards abducted on February 7, 2014 by an extremist terrorist group, in the border area between Iran and Pakistan.” Note that he neatly classifies a “possibility” into a “fact,” a leitmotif that runs throughout the letter. He then lists several other attacks, including “repeated explosions and terrorist attacks in our Eastern border in recent months….Two car-bomb attacks on the Iranian diplomatic and cultural premises in Beirut on 19 November 2013 and 19 February 2014….Abduction and murder of Iranian diplomatic personnel in Sana’a, including kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat, Mr. Nour Ahmad Nikbakht, on July 21, 2013, and brutal assassination of another, Mr. Abolghassem Assadi, on January 18, 2014; and-Suicide attack on the Iranian Consulate-General in Peshawar, on February 25, 2014.”
As if the “diplomats” and military forces of Zarif’s regime were just minding their own peaceful business! Iran is up to its neck in the civil war in Yemen, actively waging war against the Syrian opposition, actively supporting anti-American terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, repressing any and all signs of independence from the Balouchi tribes in Iran and across its eastern borders, and calling the shots for the Hezbollah killers in Lebanon. Maybe Ban Ki-moon will remind Zarif that he who kills first is not entitled to whine and beg for help when his intended victims fight back.
But Zarif insists on his running gag, insisting that somehow, inexplicably, his countrymen have been targeted by “State-sponsored extremist groups” and he urges the “international community” to do something. Fast.
This from a minister of the country that routinely wins the blue ribbon in the competition for the title of “world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” HoHo.
Perhaps the funniest part of Zarif’s letter is his claim that Iran is doing more than any other country to combat narcotics trafficking and transnational crime, in which Iran has long played a major role. Iran now has the highest per capita rate of drug addiction in the world, works with narcotics traffickers from Latin America (most energetically via Venezuela), and handles a significant amount of heroin from Afghanistan, which yields plenty of hard currency for the regime’s elite. Just ask the U.S. Treasury Department, which branded the Revolutionary Guards general in charge of the “anti-narcotics” campaign as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker for his involvement in drug smuggling and supporting terrorism.
It’s right out of a Mel Brooks script, isn’t it? And the punch line comes from the UN, which unsurprisingly praises Iran’s anti-narcotics program in language that would make Zarif blush. Who issued the praise? One Yuri Fedotov. Who publicized the statement? The Tehran Times.
Just thought you’d like to know.
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