How ANC’s Iran alliance exposes a dangerous foreign policy gamble: Ilan Preskovsky.
Key topics:
SANDF chief pledged support to Iran, sparking global outrage
ANC’s Iran ties strain US relations, risking trade and diplomacy
Coalition partners sidelined as ANC dominates foreign policy
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By Ilan Preskovsky*
At this point, we probably shouldn’t be remotely surprised by either the ANC’s incompetence or its utterly wrong-headed approach to foreign policy, but just when you thought members of our leading party couldn’t sink any lower, they do just that.
Last month, South African National Defence Force chief, General Rudzani Maphwanya, met with several high-ranking military officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including defence minister, Major General Aziz Nasizadeh, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, and Iranian commander-in-chief of the Iranian army, General Amir Hatami. That he should take meetings at all with such figures is repellent enough, but what was said during these meetings are almost too insane to believe.
In a move that sent even DIRCO and the ANC into a tailspin, Maphwanya pledged unqualified “political and military support” to the Islamic Republic and, according to the Tehran Times, happily accepted Hatami’s stance that South Africa and Iran share the common goals of “fighting global arrogance and aggressive colonial approaches” by replying, without a trace of irony, that the Islamic Republic and South Africa share the common goals of always standing alongside “the oppressed and defenceless people of the world”.
Let’s take a step back while that sets in…
Selling a Nation’s Soul to the Devil
Contrary to what some on the far-left may believe, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not something that anyone in their right mind would have anything to do with – let alone pledge political or military support. It is a radical Islamist theocracy that is the biggest state sponsor of terror in the world and the sworn enemy of the West. It’s a country where the mantra of “death to America, death to Israel” is effectively its pledge of allegiance and its citizens are routinely arrested, tortured and murdered for daring to speak out against the ruling regime or for not being entirely observant in their practice of the Islamic Republic’s fundamentalist version of Sharia law. The Islamic Republic is, almost without question, the biggest external threat to democracy on the world stage and has stood out as one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet for nearing forty years.
