Iran and Palestine: Past, Present, Future

197 Pages·2019·2.341 MB·English

by  Seyed Ali Alavi, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

IRAN AND PALESTINE

Examining the nature of relations between Iran and Palestine, this book investigates
the relationship between state and authorities in the Middle East.
Analysing the connections of the Iranian revolutionary movements, both the
Left’s and the Islamic camps’ perspectives are scrutinized. To provide a historical
background to the post-revolutionary period, the genealogy of pro-Palestinian
sentiments before 1979 are traced additionally.
Demonstrating the pro-Palestinian stance of post-revolutionary Iran, the study
focuses on the roots of the ideological outlook and the interest of the state. Despite
a growing body of literature on the Iranian Revolution and its impacts on the
region, Iran’s connection with Palestine has been overlooked. This new volume fi lls
the gap in the literature and enables readers to unpack the history of the two states.
This unique and comprehensive coverage of Iran and Palestine’s relationship is a
key resource for scholars and students interested in international relations, politics,
Islamic and Middle East studies.
Seyed Ali Alavi is a Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. He holds
a PhD in International Studies. He completed his master’s degree in Middle East
Politics and his undergraduate studies in International Politics of Europe and
America in London.
Iranian Studies
Edited by:
Homa Katouzian
University of Oxford
and
Mohamad Tavakoli
University of Toronto
Since 1967 the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) has been a leading
learned society for the advancement of new approaches in the study of Iranian
society, history, culture, and literature. The new ISIS Iranian Studies series published
by Routledge will provide a venue for the publication of original and innovative
scholarly works in all areas of Iranian and Persianate Studies.
The True Dream
An English Translation with Facing Persian Text
Ali-Ashgar Seyed-Gohrab and Senn McGlinn
Popular Iranian Cinema before the Revolution
Family and Nation in Filmfarsi
Pedram Partovi
Persian Literature and Modernity
Production and Reception
Edited by Hamid Rezaei Yazdi and Arshavez Mozafari
Rival Conceptions of Freedom in Modern Iran
An Intellectual History of the Constitutional Revolution
Ahmad Hashemi
Iran and Palestine
Past, Present, Future
Seyed Ali Alavi
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
middleeaststudies/series/IRST
IRAN AND PALESTINE
Past, Present, Future
Seyed Ali Alavi
Foreword by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Seyed Ali Alavi
© 2020 Foreword, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
The right of Seyed Ali Alavi to be identifi ed as author of this work and of
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam for the Foreword has been asserted by them, in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alavi, Seyed Ali, author.
Title: Iran and Palestine : past, present, future / Seyed Ali Alavi ; foreword by
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2019. | Series: Iranian studies ; 39 | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2019010336 (print) | LCCN 2019014155 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429277078 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781000022612 (Adobe Reader) |
ISBN 9781000022919 (Epub) | ISBN 9781000022766 (Mobipocket) |
ISBN 9780367228293 | ISBN 9780367228293 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367228316 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780429277078 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Iran—Foreign relations—Palestine. | Palestine—Foreign
relations—Iran. | Iran—Relations—Palestine. | Palestine—Relations—Iran. |
Arab-Israeli confl ict.
Classifi cation: LCC DS274.2.P19 (ebook) | LCC DS274.2.P19 A43 2019
(print) | DDC 327.5505694—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019010336
ISBN: 978-0-367-22829-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-22831-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-27707-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For my late grandfather, Seyed Jalal, and for my father,
Seyed Khaled, with honour

CONTENTS
Foreword by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam viii
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
1 Iran’s pre-revolutionary opposition and the Palestine cause 9
2 Iran’s relations with Palestine during the fi rst decade
of the Islamic revolution 47
3 Iran’s relations with Palestinian Islamic Jihad 83
4 Relations between Iran and Hamas (1987–2011): strategic
partnership, shared values and ideological differences 103
5 Iran and Palestinian Islamic movements in the post–Arab
Spring era 127
6 Conclusion 159
B ibliography 166
I ndex 176
FOREWORD
When a jubilant Yasser Arafat came to Tehran in February 1979 as the fi rst foreign
leader after the Iranian revolution, the late chairman of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) was jubilant, even jolly. “Every Iranian freedom fi ghter is rep-
resented in the Iranian revolution”, Arafat proclaimed. The region, he concluded
“has been turned upside down”. 1 Subsequently, the Iranian revolutionaries handed
the key of the huge Israeli compound in Tehran to the Palestinians in a highly
symbolic gesture. This was the fi rst territory that the Palestinians gained after the
establishment of Israel in 1948. Arafat said “thank you” and supported Saddam
Hussein in his monstrous invasion of revolutionary Iran. Since then, the relations of
Iran with the PLO have been fractured.
O ver three decades after the revolution, there continues to be a lot of talk about
Iranian infl uence in the region, including in Palestine. From Iraq to Syria to Leba-
non, Iran has managed to cultivate close relations with the governments in power.
The Palestinian question continues to be salient, even if far less radically articulated
than during the heyday of the revolution, in the discourse of both Iranian leaders
and the actors within the country’s powerful civil society. As Alavi demonstrates
superbly in this important and unique study, Palestine has been a part of the Iranian
imagination for quite some time now. In the romantic articulation of the revolu-
tionary discourse that engulfed the country in the late 1960s and 1970s, Palestine
became a symbol of oppression of a victimised nation on the one hand and resis-
tance to injustice on the other. There was almost a metaphysical emphasis on the
just cause that the Palestinians pursued against all odds, in the face of Goliath, the
state of Israel with its overwhelming military force. The Iranian support of Pales-
tine has been informed by those romantic yearnings of the revolutionaries, which
have been turned into Machiavellian calculations by the post-revolutionary state:
for successive Iranian governments, the emotive issue of Palestine serves as a Trojan
horse to appeal to civil societies throughout the region and beyond. At the same
Foreword ix
time, infl uence in Palestine is a part of a regional strategy to contain the power of
the Israeli state in order to gain strategic depth and defend Iran if necessary. To the
mind of Iranian decisionmakers, this essentially defensive disposition is necessary in
the face of repeated threats by the Israeli state to attack Iran and its allies.
A second factor needs to be added here. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian
equation, there exists a “cultural” dilemma for a country such as Iran. The Jewish
foundation of the Israeli state, once divested from its psycho-nationalist hysteria, chimes
with the cultural and ethical constitution of the meaning of Iran since ancient times.
In short – and I am aware that this is a hotly debated topic – Iran or Persia has carried
a distinctly Jewish narrative thousands of years before the state of Israel was invented
with so much anger embedded within its political culture. This angry attitude per-
meating Israeli politics manifests itself repeatedly in the rather comical presentations of
the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allegations about an Iranian
nuclear bomb. For example, in order to accentuate this fear, Netanyahu presented
President Barack Obama with the Book of Esther at a meeting in the White House in
March 2012. The Book of Esther entails a biblical story in which the Jews of Persia
were threatened with massslaughter by the Persian king Xerxes. What Netanyahu
failed to add is that at the end of the story, the Jews are not actually killed. In fact, the
reverse is said to have happened: Esther was the Jewish wife of King Xerxes, and when
she pleads with him that his Vizier Haman plans to destroy the empire’s Jews, Xerxes
allows them to defend themselves, leading to the killing of 75,000 Persians and the
slaughter of Haman’s ten sons. Thereafter, Esther institutes a festival of redemption, the
holiday of Purim, which is celebrated throughout the world today.
But for Netanyahu’s distinctly ideological reading of this story, it is during Purim
when “we will read how some 2,500 years ago, a Persian anti-Semite tried to anni-
hilate the Jewish people”. 2 Netanyahu is evasive, of course. He fails to add that it
was the Persians who werekilled, not Persia’s Jews. Iran is certainly not famed for
its intolerance towards the Jews of the Persian empire: indeed, it is almost com-
mon knowledge by now that the Persian king Cyrus is mentioned in the Torah as
a “saviour”and “saint” of the Jewish people, and the Old Testament describes him
as God’s “anointed” and “chosen ruler” because he gave refuge to the Jews when
they were persecuted by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century
BCE. The tomb of Esther is in Hamedan (ancient Ecbatana), in the north-west
of today’s Islamic Republic of Iran. The tomb draws pilgrims from all over Iran,
especially during Purim. The walls of the building explain the origins of Esther in
Hebrew, and they are not desecrated by swastikas or neo-Nazi slogans, as some of
the Jewish cemeteries elsewhere continue to be.
Moreover, at a time when Nazi Germany was busy implementing the Endlösung ,
Iranian diplomats offered hundreds of Iranian passports to European Jews in order
to facilitate their exodus, especially from Poland (there continues to be a sizeable
Polish-Jewish minority in Iran to this date). After the abdication of Reza Shah in
favour of his son, which was forced upon him by the Allied Forces, the Iranian
monarchy continued with pro-Jewish policies. For instance, the so-called Iranian
Schindler, Abdol-Hassan Sardari, who was in charge of the Iranian consular offi ce