How can one real war be a good idea, asks the Iranian lawyer and activist Nobel Peace Prize 2003, Shirin Ebadi. Answers the Courier from his home in London, his exile since 2009. He always uses the adjective “true” to distinguish the regime’s threats and lies from reality: “The Iranian attack on Israel was a real mistake.”
Explain.
«First of all there is a military aspect: the ayatollahs will never be able to win a war against Israel and the first to know it are they who immediately afterwards took care to say “it’s over for us”. They also knew that Netanyahu would respond, and he would do so harshly. Let’s see the next move.”
So why did they attack?
«I don’t have a certain answer, to me it’s madness. But I believe that the Islamic Republic wanted to communicate that if it wants it can change the cards on the table. That his are not just slogans, but he wants it to be known that he has real political will against the Jewish state. Since 1979, since the Islamic Revolution, both the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his successor Khamenei have always repeated that Israel must disappear. Probably, in this Middle Eastern chaos and after the attack on the embassy in Damascus, the regime thought of scaring Netanyahu, to ensure that he does not attack either Iran or his friends.”
What do people who live in the country say?
«Nobody wants war. We are seeing in Gaza what this means: thousands of deaths, homes and infrastructure destroyed. Not even the ayatollahs want a conflict. They scream, they threaten but they wouldn’t have the strength to withstand the Israeli bombs.”
Since Saturday’s attacks, the regime has increased repression in the country. Two days ago a girl named Rozhan Akbari was killed, another Mahsa Amini.
«The Islamic Republic is very clear that more than 80% of citizens want to expel them. They are afraid that the people will use this conflict to start an internal war against the ayatollahs, or that they will take to the streets again. They have increased the moral police, they have returned to being very aggressive with women who do not wear the veil, they have made it known that anyone who supports Israel, even via social media, will be put in prison. Khamenei’s first, true enemy is the Iranian people.”
Could a war speed up the end of the Islamic Republic?
«The end of a dictatorship cannot happen through an external event. Iranians know how revolutions work. They strike, demonstrate, they don’t vote against the regime because they fight it with peaceful and democratic methods: the only ones that change the culture of the country from within.”
What will happen to the revolutionary movement Donna, Vita, Libertà in this moment of crisis?
«It will strengthen itself in the face of the weakness of the regime. This is much more than a movement, it is a cultural change and culture does not erase or recede. We Iranian women, before the Islamic Revolution, had personal and social freedom, but we lacked political freedom: the Shah was still a dictator. In 1979 we made the Revolution because we also wanted to obtain political freedom, in exchange they took all three away from us. Now the time has come to take them back.”
