Last week the Coalition moved a motion in the Senate condemning Iran attacking Israel.
This was on top of suspending the Senate to talk about Israel.
Apart from the fact that I doubt anyone on the other side of the world is listening to the Australian Senate it’s incredibly hypocritical of the Coalition to be calling out Iran when the John Howard led Coalition supported the invasion of Iraq on the the basis of made up lies and destroyed the lives of millions of people.
It’s also worth remembering that Iran is the State it is today because the CIA overthrew a democratically elected President there in 1953.
There is no place for self righteous virtue signalling hypocrisy when it comes to foreign affairs. People’s lives are not pawns on a chess set to be callously and brutally destroyed in the name of scoring political points.
As I said in my maiden speech “Twenty-first century foreign affairs have been characterised by belligerent rhetoric and an unwillingness to seek peace through diplomatic channels. This needs to change. Sound diplomacy and strength of position is the foundation of peace.”
I should add that after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 as per Marc Rich’s biography Israel kept buying oil from Iran through diplomatic back channels.
Unfortunately all war is a racket designed to enrich the elites at the expense of human beings.
It’s a game I won’t be playing. We need to focus on fixing problems here in Australia.
Senate on 8/10/2024
Matters of Urgency
Iran
Senator RENNICK (Queensland) (16:39): I rise to pass some remarks on this motion. While I definitely condemn the widespread sponsoring of terrorism, I think it’s very important that we reflect on the West’s actual role in sponsoring terrorism in the Middle East over the last 70 years.
In my lifetime, I saw the illegal invasion of Iraq and the death of what is estimated to be a million people in Iraq. I’ve never seen any accountability by governments in the West for the actions they caused there. And then we go to Iran: what happened in Iran, and why is Iran the country it is today? There was a president of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who cared deeply for his people, and he wanted those oil interests of Iran to be in Iranian hands. Yet the British, under Churchill, and the Americans, under Eisenhower—and I’m not sure how much Eisenhower knew about this, because there is a widespread pattern of coups whenever presidents take over, in their first year. These coups include Iran in 1953, Suez Canal in 1956, the Bay of Pigs when Kennedy got in, and Johnson in 1965 with Vietnam. The point of the matter is that the CIA overthrew a democratic leader in Iran who wanted to fight for his people and make sure that his country got royalties for those oil sales. That led, of course, to the Shah and his oppressive regime, which led to the overthrow, in 1979, of the Shah and what we’ve got today.
I’ve been to Iran. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people. I’ve been to Israel as well. I don’t support any terrorism, but I think we need to be careful about taking a stand and being self-righteous about this when we’ve contributed ourselves.
