I agree with the son of the late Shah of Iran about the idea that democratization in Iran would solve many problems; not only in Iran but also in the whole region from the tip of the Gulf of Oman to the tip of Dnipro (Dnieper) River. Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince of Iran and founder of the National Council of Iran, in his speech last week at the Jerusalem Post Annual New York Conference, was not circumscribing the area of impact of the regime change in Iran as large as I am doing here; but he, too, was drawing attention to the “tension, conflict, radicalism, nuclear threat, instability that all tied to what happened in Iran in the region.”
In the past 44 years, since his father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced with an theocracy-centric regime in 1979, so many things happened. The Soviet Union collapsed. The direction of communism in China has been so altered we hesitate to call it communism. The U.S. declared war against Islam under the disguise of terrorism. Terrorism declared war against the West under the disguise of Islam. Iraq and Syria have been dismembered into three and each waiting for the last push to declare independence or Türkiye being caught unaware for a blink of an eye.
Of course, I don’t mean all the events that happened in the last four decades happened because of the fall of the Shah of Iran. But they happened in such a crucial region of the globe that they impacted the focus of attention of several important global players. The resulting distractibility magnified very important issues on the global scene as the security of Israel, the safety of the free flow of energy from the Middle East, outbreaks of Ebola, HIV and COVID-19, and many other problems. As a result, the export of Daesh terrorism from Iraq into other countries, the Iranian clerics’ export of Shiism (Shiite Islam) into what came to be known as the Shiite Crescent from Yemen to the Gulf countries and to Lebanon, did not receive enough attention and international handling they should have.
The overall darkness in the Middle East hindered, for instance, how Taliban terrorists traveled all the way from Afghanistan, through supposedly hostile countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Iraq to Syria and they claimed one-third of the country. Nobody in the neighboring countries noticed but over the continents and oceans, the U.S. had wised up the infiltration of thousands of “Afghans” into Syria and created that international coalition (consisting of only themselves and a couple of Tommies from the U.K.) against Daesh. But since the Vietnam War, neither the Tommies nor Johnnies do the actual fighting, but they find “boots on the ground” to do it for them; and luckily, there were PKK terrorists from neighboring Türkiye and Iraq, who would gladly do it if the lands they were going to liberate from Daesh would be recognized as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. Türkiye could do only so much to prevent the creation of a terrorist state along its long borders with Syria; Russia, the only official ally of the Syrian government should be involved with this major threat to Syria’s territorial integrity; but thanks to the Iranian clerics, who also happened to be siding with Russia, the Russian government would not be busying itself with Syria but focus its attention on Ukraine!
Yes, that is how the fall of Iran’s Shah impacted the entire region to the Dnipro River. The Ukrainians agreed to talk to the Russians about their occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and their three provinces in the Donetsk area in what they call the “Normandy talks,” after all these years and promises made by the U.S. and EU on the billions of dollars of military aid and equipment – EU and NATO membership changed their mind. The president who had been elected with a one-item promise – “Keep the cease-fire intact no matter what happens” – almost overnight changed his stance from “Peace at whatever cost” to “Liberate Crimea and Donetsk from Russian occupation, now!”
Türkiye, being the only NATO country that respectfully talks to and is listened to by both parties in the Ukrainian conflict and brought them to the cease-fire table before and managed to wrangle a grain agreement from the hands of Russians, proposed an international investigation into the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.
Lo, and behold! Of all the people, Kyiv's Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, who visited Türkiye several times and had been endeared to many people in the country, rejected Türkiye’s Kakhovka dam proposal, saying he was sick and tired of the “quasi-justice” that Türkiye was after!
In the dead of the night on Tuesday, shortly before 3 a.m., residents near Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant heard a blast followed by roaring sounds of rushing water. The dam, which held back a section of the Dnipro River, had collapsed and the broken reservoir started disgorging torrents of water.
So far, hundreds of thousands of people had to be removed from the flooded area with the waters threatening a nearby nuclear power plant. Ukraine blamed Russia for the destruction of the dam; the Kremlin, in turn, said Ukraine was responsible for the disaster as water surged through the Kakhovka dam in a Russian-controlled area of the Kherson region. Millions of tons of water cascaded downstream from the breach, inundating residential settlements and agricultural areas, threatening lives and livelihoods.
In addition to its urgent humanitarian help, Türkiye suggested finding the responsible party simply because the destruction of dams is a war crime and perpetrators of such crimes are simply benefiting from that inhuman conflict in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba should know better than anyone else that Türkiye is not in a “game to indulge the Russians.” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his opinion several times that Russia should stop its military operations and return to the negotiation table immediately.
What Kuleba said has no common sense or reason: He is not explaining his rejection of an international investigation. Quite the contrary, such acute and complete rejection attracts suspicion to the rejecter himself. Especially, when your rejection not only depends on no reason whatsoever but as it is based on an unappreciative attitude, people might start thinking that you are hiding something. The Ukraine dam disaster demands accountability even more now. Those responsible for the disaster should be held accountable.
The dam used to provide drinking water for millions of Ukrainians and irrigation to millions of acres of agricultural land. That is how Ukraine provides 10% of the world’s wheat. Now grain prices for the entire world go up because of the disaster.
It is not a simple military “move” in this unholy war. The U.S. and EU would naturally mold it to their interest in prolonging the war. But it is not in the interest of the Ukrainians. European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen was quick in blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin and asking Russia to pay for the war crimes committed in Ukraine. Yes, it should. But first, the war has to stop.
As U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, the disaster is “another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Since Russia insists it is not its fault, it should accept a technical investigation; Kyiv is obviously using the disaster to gain more Western support. Right after the disaster, the U.S. announced that it is preparing another $2 billion in arms for Ukraine. The next weapons package will reportedly include Patriot missiles and refurbished Hawk launchers.
The U.S. is determined to fight the Russians in Ukraine until the last Ukrainian.
Mr. Kuleba should tell us how it rhymes in Ukrainian.
