I prefer to be candid in my political commentary, to call a spade a spade. When it comes to Iran’s destructive actions in the region and across the world, we have to call it how it is. For this reason, I have to say that Iranian interference in the Ukraine war by supplying Russia with drones is an Iranian attack on NATO countries.
Yes, just as it has targeted and is targeting our region, Iran is now targeting Europe. Iranian drones were used to attack oil processing facilities at Abqaiq in 2019, and these are the same drones that the Houthis have deployed against Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The Popular Mobilization Forces and Asaib Ahl al-Haq use these same drones in Iraq, and Hezbollah uses them to strike Israel. These drones are not new, but Europe and the United States have only recently woken up to them because Iranian drones are now hitting NATO countries.
Thus, it is the silence of the US and Europe, especially the endless mistakes that Americans keep making in the way they deal with Iran, has emboldened Iran to attack European countries, NATO in particular.
In discussing the United States' silence and leniency, reflecting on two examples suffices.
The first is former US president Barack Obama admitting, in an effort to help the Democrats in the Midterms, that he had made a mistake when he did not support the “Green Revolution” in 2009. Obama’s mistakes are too many to count in the first place.
The second example involves Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who, as rhetoric about Saudi-US relations demonstrates, has no idea how foreign policy works. On August 12 2021, he made statements from Lebanon that he surely does not remember now.
At the time, Senator Murphy said: “Washington should deprioritize its hostility toward Iran”, decrease its overall “militaristic footprint” in the Middle East and urge Saudi Arabia to “come to terms” with Hezbollah.
Alright, today Washington is saying that the Russians’ alliance with Iran, which was manifested in the use of the latter drones in Ukraine and the country sending its experts to Ukraine, threatens the international community. We don’t know how we can confront this alliance without good and positive relations with Saudi Arabia and thus, the countries of the region.
And so, the fact that Iranian drones are now targeting NATO countries in Ukraine is not the result of fleeting contingencies. Rather, it is genuine aggression, and it demonstrates that remaining silent about Iran’s crimes, in both the region and Europe, has become a real and unprecedented threat.
Iran does not just repress its citizens. It also targets the countries of the region, and it has destroyed four Arab capitals so far. Its drones now target a European capital, Kyiv, and Iran is doing so to target all NATO countries.
This matter does not require targeted sanctions on entities and individuals in Iran. Instead, it demands a comprehensive plan for how to address the dangers posed by Iran, which now threatens Europe with patent political blackmail.
Tough sanctions must be reimposed on Iran, and a plan B for how to deal with it must be developed, even if it is a military option. We also need to speed up the building of an integrated defense system for the region that covers all its moderate and stable countries and Israel.
Direct actions to target the Iranian militias in the region from Syria to Yemen and from Lebanon to Iraq must also be undertaken. Targeting does not necessarily imply military action, it could take the form of support for the forces opposed to those militias. More importantly than either this or that is the need to support the peaceful people of Iran facing the regime’s vicious killing machines.
