Shona Murray: EU’s doublethink on Israel undermines its stance on Iranian terror
Women cross a street in Tehran under a huge banner showing hands firmly holding Iranian flags as a sign of patriotism, as one of them flashes the victory sign. Picture: Vahid Salemi/AP
After deliberating for the last few weeks, the EU moved fairly fast to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the ideological armed forces pivotal for much of the ongoing state repression of Iranian civilians — a terrorist organisation.
“This will place them on the same level as Al-Qaeda, Hamas or Daesh. If you act like terrorists, you must be treated as such,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told journalists ahead of a meeting of Foreign Affairs ministers in Brussels on Thursday.
“The scale of repression and the heavy means used by the Iranian regime must have consequences,” she said. Kallas is 100% correct that the system in Iran which uses hanging and torture as a tool of repression against civilians and hostages should face full consequences.
The death toll among Iranian civilians for this latest uprising is unknown because the regime plunged the country into darkness as a method of control so communication is very difficult. But estimates range from 5,000 to 30,000.
We all agree that the brave Iranians risking their lives to demand a life of basic rights and dignity, and striving to usher in a new system of government, deserve our support and respect.
As for the thousands of Iranians for which it is too late — the potentially hundreds of thousands killed over three decades of the regime — in an ideal world those responsible will be brought to justice. Either in a national or international court depending on the ability of a new system to exercise jurisdiction and oversight for fair and free trials.
By September last year, Amnesty International said Iran had executed 1,000 people that year alone. It was “the highest number of yearly executions in Iran that the organization has recorded in at least 15 years,” said the report.
In recent years, the regime has escalated the use of the death penalty to “quash dissent” and was displaying a “chilling assault on the right to life,” said Heba Morayef, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
So be it the judges in the Revolutionary Court who stand over routinely corrupt sham trials — where the sentence of death is preordained — or the violent members of the so-called “morality police” which murdered 22-year-old Mahsa Amimi by beating her to death over not wearing an enforced hijab over her hair, any pressure or signal that the EU is willing to act and respond to such criminality is welcome.
The EU also moved to sanction several individuals responsible for the bloody crackdown on protestors, including the arbitrary arrest of political activists and human rights defenders. In addition, several entities involved in Iran’s drone programme which enables Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will be sanctioned.
Again, this is entirely in line with the purpose and values of the EU’s foreign policy, as well as international law. The move was agreed unanimously on Wednesday evening ahead of the Foreign Affairs Council when all ministers were due to meet.
Starkly and depressingly different is the EU’s position on Palestine. Brussels has resigned itself to the fact that there is no red line that Israel can cross which will result in any such sanction or meaningful rebuke.
The unbearable human suffering in Gaza as part of Israel’s assault there is still as bad as ever. But EU officials and diplomats effectively shrug their shoulders in defeat when the matter is raised.
The EU is Israel’s biggest trade partner, and it also enjoys several scientific, cultural and research partnerships such as its contribution to the EU’s €95bn Horizon Europe research programme.
Given the closeness of relations — Israel is part of the EU’s neighbourhood — EU member states are kept constantly abreast of the hellish conditions in which Palestinians are clinging to life.
An EU investigation concluded Israel breached the EU-Israel Association Agreement’s Human Rights clause. The breaches are ongoing.
Several babies including newborns have died of hypothermia of the freezing cold weather in the last few weeks alone, according to the UN. Images of children shivering, traumatised in the drenched conditions are shocking.
And these are the images we’ve been allowed to see. Journalists have been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces and some NGO’s — the only semblance of humanity coming from the outside of the enclave are now being blocked entry.
While Gaza was part of the agenda of the Foreign Affairs Council on Thursday there is almost total resignation amongst EU officials from all member states, the European Commission, the European Council — the entire body of the EU — that Europe will do nothing of any consequence to alleviate the ongoing barbarity there.
Nothing defends the Hamas attacks on October 7. Let’s make that clear. But that attack is being instrumentalised by Israel to make life uninhabitable by causing irreparable harm to a once bustling, albeit struggling, Palestinian territory.
German chancellor Frederich Merz took a meeting in Tel Aviv with Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. The meeting could not take place in Berlin because the Israeli premier is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes including starvation and extermination. And Germany would be obliged to arrest him.
Even so, Metz made an election promise in early 2025 to sidestep the ICC's warrant and "find a way" to allow Netanyahu make a state visit.
The double standards are so glaring it diminishes Brussels’ outrage and defence of the brave Iranians enduring their own agony.
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