Humiliating Captives versus Islamic Mercy
In his article, Sadegh Maleki, a senior political analyst, addresses the recent move by Iran’s state TV showing captured US sailors in tears.
To believe in the United States is naivety but more so is entry into a war in which defeat is its definite result. Avoiding a war, which leads to defeat, represents, materializes, rationality. Let us not forget that during the Sacred Defense, war and peace were both imposed on us, and that is a place for deep contemplation.
Magnanimity is the legacy of Iran. Clemency has been and still is part of the Iranian culture. It is inconsistent with international law, magnanimity, Islamic clemency or political maturity to show an American soldier’s tears.
The show featuring the American soldiers is a crisis management for its backers to know that the people, who declared with the JCPOA that they sought to rid their country of the sinister shadow of war, will pay for it. The national pride that is the historical heritage of a nation should not be endangered by nurturing superficial sentiments.
Wars do not start all of a sudden but little by little, in the context of time. Sometimes, simple pretexts trigger them. There is no doubt that publishing images of the American soldiers while crying is a national humiliation for the United States. Just in the same way the display of tied American hands in the embassy occupation was one of the main factors behind Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, the recent humiliation can leave an imprint in American minds and hearts, to be retaliated. The costs of entry or crisis making should be meticulously calculated with the win-lose conditions taken into account.
Washington’s hostility with Iran stems from the latter’s independence based on the three tenants of dignity, wisdom and expediency. If a message of continued animosity is supposed to be communicated to the US, the show is not in harmony with the three aforementioned principles and the message was not conveyed appropriately. Governments should take measures based on wisdom supported by public opinion in their countries and the world to have legitimacy.
Domestic calculations and opposition to the ‘administration of prudence and hope’ should not lead to stimulating an enemy whose hawks are impatiently waiting for an opportunity to start another war. Iran is different with Iraq but it could make us think twice, that compared with the displacement and death of millions of Iraqis, the invading US had five thousand men killed, a large part of whom were soldiers who sought their green cards.
Wisdom requires avoidance of a conflict the results of which are clear. A glance at the peripheral situation prompts reconsideration. Iraq and Syria are on the fire of crisis. Turkey is insecure. Saudi Arabia is engaged in the Yemeni crisis and Iran, under the shade of prudence and wisdom, resembles a safe island.
Relations with the US are not forbidden, even though we can refuse to have them. And there is a difference between not having relations and stimulating animosity. The United States’ dossier on Iran and the region, in its support for the Zionist regime, destruction of Iraq and Syria, its backing the Wahhabi regime of the Saudi kingdom, is agreeably dark, showing the US soldiers’ tears is not an appropriate way to prove US animosity with Iran as it is no proof of our bravery.