Trump’s new court in Tehran has implied message
It matters for Iran who is POTUS
Although on the eve of every presidential election period in the United States, the official line out of Tehran, sometimes delivered by the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is that it makes no difference who wins from their perspective, this time one of the other two candidates is facing charges in Tehran for the murder of an Iranian general. No matter how symbolic the trial is considered to be, it means we cannot say in all honesty anymore that the two candidates are indistinguishable. This is not, of course, the motive for holding the trial, and it has nothing to do with the American elections, but this implied message can be taken from it.
By Mehrdad Khadir
Journalist
According to an announcement by Iran’s Judiciary about the new trial, an investigation into the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad was held on September 7, at the Imam Khomeini Judicial Complex. Reportedly, the breach of international law principles in this terrorist operation was among the topics covered in the indictment.
The defendants in the case are former US president Donald Trump and former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and it is interesting to note that the defendants’ lawyers were also present. Naturally, the news attracts attention because many want to know whether the trial is only symbolic or not, and who the lawyers for the defendants were. Does this mean that lawyers actually spoke in defense of Donald Trump and in justification of the assassination of a top Iranian commander in a court in Tehran?
This note cannot address the legal aspects or how the court’s final judgment can be enforced. It only serves as a political observation. Just four years ago, when some media outlets expressed hope that Trump’s departure from the White House would revitalize the JCPOA and that Joe Biden would become president, some fundamentalist figures and media outlets criticized this, with even the speaker of the parliament, who was new to this position, sarcastically asking why our eyes should be on New Jersey and Arizona.
The concern of radicals in their ranks in Iran, of course, was that with Biden’s victory and a subsequent boost in the hopes of reviving the JCPOA, Mohammad Javad Zarif or another pro-JCPOA candidate would win the Iranian presidency, dashing their dreams of securing the presidency. Perhaps this was why they preempted and, after the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, passed the Strategic Action Law in Parliament that made the revival of the JCPOA difficult, if not impossible.
When Biden won, some Iranian political figures expressed their satisfaction. During a morning television show, the host asked Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was the head of the Tehran City Council at the time, the reason for his happiness. Hashemi answered, “Why shouldn’t we be happy about the defeat of the killer of Martyr Soleimani?” Whenever the name of General Soleimani is brought up, they could no longer claim that the candidates were all the same, and their arguments fell flat.
Even now, with another trial for Trump taking place in Tehran, we can ask Iranian radical fundamentalists: does it really make no difference to you if it is announced in November that Donald Trump — the mastermind of the assassination of General Soleimani — will return to the White House and that the world would effectively be rid of him forever? We should not be so naive and idealistic as to think that the president of the United States is all-powerful, nor so pessimistic and conspiracy theorist as to consider him irrelevant.
If it didn’t matter whether the president was a Democrat or a Republican, and which Republican or Democrat, Iran’s ousted Mohammad Reza Shah would not have tried to influence the 1976 presidential election in favor of Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. If there was no difference, Americans would not have signed a nuclear deal with Iran under one president — Barack Obama — and withdrawn from it under the next — Donald Trump.
No two people are the same, and when the Republican George W. Bush is different from the Republican Donald Trump, it is obvious that the policies of the Democrat Kamala Harris will differ from Trump’s as well.
Holding a trial for Trump in Tehran and trying him as the commander-in-chief who ordered the killing of an Iranian general, regardless of legal and political interpretations and whether it is a real or symbolic trial, sends a clear message: this time, the Islamic Republic of Iran should view the outcome of the US election as significant.
Not only because in Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian became the president instead of Saeed Jalili but also because such a trial has not been held for Ms. Harris. Based on this principle, Iranian radicals cannot fall back on their usual refrain that “they are all the same, and it makes no difference.”
The full article first appeared in Farsi on Asr Iran.