As
I express my disagreement and concern regarding the decision to execute General
Qassem Soleimani, I must also recognise that the regime he spent his life
fighting for is an aberration in today’s world.
I
acknowledge the rights of the Iranian people to decide about their government
and its politics. The problem is that their leaders do not give the people the
freedom to choose. The leaders have imposed on the population a religion-based
dictatorship, that has all the features of a medieval type of life. The country
has become hell on earth, in the name of God. That is unacceptable, in Iran, as
well as in the neighbouring countries or anywhere else in the world. And that
must be denounced in all kinds of forums. The condemnation is not about
religion, it is about making use of religious beliefs to impose a totalitarian
regime on people.
The
European approach to such countries must combine pressure on human rights and democratic
values with economic restrictions. In addition, it must include serious
security measures to avoid those countries’ hostile actions, including the
promotion they could make of all kinds of radicalism and religious fanaticism. Our
policy must be a delicate mix of firmness, encouragement, dialogue, distance
and prudence. In the end, it is about sticks and carrots, but certainly not about
drones and bombs. It should also be about helping other countries that want to
move away from the influence of those theocratic dictatorships.
This
approach is certainly very different from the one President Trump is pursuing.
That’s our right and nobody in Washington can challenge it. Secretary Pompeo’s
remarks about the role of EU countries – he basically said that key European States
have not been supportive enough of the American action – are not welcome. Here,
as in other occasions, it is our duty to be clear about our policies towards a
very explosive and complex area of the globe. And our policies are not
subordinated to the views in Washington, or elsewhere outside the EU.
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