Former Foreign Minister Zarif’s Balancing Act on the Israel-Hamas Conflict

Neither a hard-liner nor a reformist, former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is an apparatchik, a man of the system harboring political ambitions. As such, it is no surprise that he on the one hand follows the regime’s line of extending support to Hamas but on the other recently emphasized that Iran is not obliged to “fight the war of the downtrodden.”

• November 8: During the “Palestine Issue According to International Law” conference, Zarif said, as quoted by reformist Jamaran News:
  • “We cannot consider” Israeli “settlers, who are armed and kill Palestinians, as civilians just because they are not wearing a military uniform … Well, children, the elderly, and the like are civilians, but living in settlements itself is illegal … Imagine if the Iraqis who invaded Iran” in 1980 “started settlements” on Iranian territory. “Would we have been obliged to respect their rights? They are elements of occupation. We are in need of establishing a standard. In an occupied land, the occupying force has only obligations and no rights.” The Israeli government “has neither the right to establish order nor the right to imprison or execute” the occupied people.
  • Turning to public opinion in Iran and the role of Iran in the conflict, Zarif continued: “Our people should accept that we must defend what is right, but defending what is right does not mean deploying forces. Right now, the best way of defending the rights of the Palestinian nation is to not allow Israel to call Palestinians ‘a proxy’ … As stated in our constitution, the solution for Iran is to defend the downtrodden, but we are not supposed to fight the war of the downtrodden. In foreign policy, one thing is having influence and another thing is getting involved. These issues are contradictory. I also believe the people” of Iran “are tired of paying a price. There is no need for us to pay a price” by getting involved. “We are capable of defending what is right.”

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