Against the backdrop of the current talks between Iran and the Western powers in Vienna, Saudi political analyst Faisal Ibrahim Al-Shammari, who specializes in American affairs and writes a column in the Makkah daily, compared Iran to Nazi Germany and the nuclear agreement with it to the Munich Agreement signed with Germany in 1938.[1] He argued that, just as the West ignored the evil of Nazi Germany on the eve of the Second World War and signed an agreement with it, Western states are now ignoring the evil of Iran and seeking to renew the nuclear agreement with it. Furthermore, just as the Munich Agreement only strengthened Nazi Germany and failed to prevent the war, a new agreement with Iran will boost its global status and will not keep it from developing nuclear weapons or prevent a war. On the contrary, the agreement is bound to increase Iran's expansionist ambitions and its support of terrorist organizations, he said. Al-Shammari warned that Iran is a police state that aspires to control its region while waging an ideological campaign against the Western democracies, and therefore an agreement with it is dangerous.
Faisal Ibrahim Al-Shammari (Source: twitter.com/Mr_Alshammeri)
The following are translated excerpts from his article.[2]
"It is said that evil exists in darkness. But I do not think that is true, because evil actually exists in the open and is very clear and blatant – so much so that people look away from it. Why? Because the minute people acknowledge the existence of evil, they realize that they must fight it, and most people prefer not to do this. That is what led to the outbreak of the Second World War and to the death of over 70 million people. Many in the West denied the evil and cruelty of the Nazis. They looked away when it was still possible to stop this evil, and later tolerated it because it had grown strong.
"In 1938 – the year the Western democracies proved to the evil dictatorial Nazi Germany that they would not do anything to stop its expansion – British prime minister Neville Chamberlain came to Munich to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. He believed Hitler's promises that there would be peace if Germany was allowed to annex large parts of Czechoslovakia, [and preferred] not to confront the Nazi evil. Upon his return to Britain, he held the agreement aloft, announced that it had been signed, and stated: 'The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.'
"The agreement [signed] in 2015 between the U.S., Europe, Russia, China and Iran is very similar to the Munich Agreement of 1938. Nazi Germany was a police state, and so is Iran. The Nazis' initial broader goal was to take control of their geographical region, and the greater goal of Iran is to expand into the Arab countries. Nazi Germany was an ideological rival of the Western democracies, and sought to dominate Europe, and Iran seeks to take over the Middle East and the Islamic world. And just as Britain and France sought to appease Nazi Germany, these same two countries, along with the U.S., have chosen to try and appease Iran…
"[However], Hitler before 1938 did not declare his intention to eliminate the [democratic] regimes in Europe or exterminate the Jews and other minorities, whereas the Iranian regime has been supporting terror and fundamentalist movements around the world since [its founding in] 1979. In Germany there were no mass demonstrations [in which people chanted] 'death to America,' as happens on a regular basis in Iran. In 1938 Germany was not responsible for terror all over the world, as Iran is today, nor was it responsible for the death of over 1,000 Americans, whereas Iran [is responsible for this number of American deaths] in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, in addition to tens of thousands of Arab [deaths].
"Neville Chamberlain defended the Munich Agreement with two main arguments: The only alternative is war, and an agreement will bring Nazi Germany back into the fold of the international community. The proponents of the nuclear agreement [with Iran] are operating on the same rationale: that the agreement is an alternative to war and will keep Iran from obtaining a [nuclear] weapon, and that it will bring Iran into the fold of the international community. But the claim that, in the absence of a nuclear agreement, Iran will attain such a weapon is baseless, for three reasons. First, the alternative to an agreement is maintaining and tightening the sanctions that weaken the Iranian regime and considerably limit its ability to finance terror organizations worldwide. Second, by strengthening Iran, an agreement will increase the chances of war. When evil and expansionist regimes become richer, they do not spend their wealth on building new hospitals or improving the infrastructures of their countries, or on [benefiting] their people, but rather on expansion and attempts to influence the countries around them. Third, Iran has been in a state of war with the U.S. for decades.
"[As for the claim that] the agreement will bring Iran into the fold of the international community, whoever believes this does not understand the nature of the regime in Tehran. The Iranian regime is comprised of religious fanatics who are morally indistinguishable from ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and all other fundamentalist mass-murdering organizations. The Iranian regime has executed more people than any other country, except for China. Over 200,000 Iranians were executed by [Iran's] inquisition courts since the founding of the Khomeini regime just for believing in other ideas. Iranian women are not allowed to leave the country without the permission of their husbands.
"In practice, Iran is the world's greatest financer of terror militias. Think what it will do with all the funds [it will earn] if sanctions are lifted. Think what it will do once the present embargo on weapons and missiles is lifted. Think what it will do with its nuclear infrastructure. The agreement will strengthen it in all three [spheres]."
[1] The Munich Agreement, concluded ןמ September 1938 by Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, provided "cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory" of Czechoslovakia, and has since become emblematic of appeasing policies towards dictatorial regimes.
[2] Makkah (Saudi Arabia), January 12, 2021.
