Monday Commentary

One slogan at a pro-democracy Iran rally held in Berlin, one of many that took place in Europe this weekend, caught my attention. It said “No Shah, no Mullahs”. It caught the dilemma of many Iranians, inside and outside the country, that are being forced into a false choice between the present clerical regime, and the “Shah”, the son of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who ruled Iran from 1941 until the 1979 revolution. For most of the time, and certainly since 1953, the Shah was absolute ruler. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was no democrat. He ruled as an absolute dictator, with the help of a secret police that tortured and abused people. It is at best disingenuous, at worst an act of great folly and cynicism, that in the United States, the son and heir of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is being promoted as the alternative to the clerical regime that currently rules Iran. Today Iran is also ready for change, but this change cannot be going back half a century in time. No Shah, no Mullahs, as the slogan in Berlin said. Its time for  Iran to turn the page, but this has to be done by the Iranian people in their own way. You cannot bomb a new regime to replace the present one. The Iranian system is resilient, and will not allow change imposed from outside. What will emerge will not be what Israel and the US wants, but it can be what the region needs: a peaceful, stable and prosperous Iran at peace with itself and its neighbours. Change is likely to come incrementally, and from inside the system. Many inside the system understand that change is needed. (click the image above to read Dennis Sammut's this week's Monday Commentary in full).

Donald Trump talks a lot. Speech is his weapon of choice, and attack is his strategy. Dangerous stuff if you happen to be the president of the United States, and have a huge and well-equipped military machine at your disposal in case you want to put words in action. But it does not require a shot to be fired for a lot of people to get hurt, and for relations built over decades to be spoilt. Trump was is Davos last week. His speech was, as expected, controversial. But it was what he said after his return that caused a stir. In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Trump said of Nato troops: "We've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. "They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan... and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.” In 2005, I took a sabbatical from my NGO work to go and work for six months with the United Nations in Afghanistan. I was part of a five-person team that was to help set up the new Afghan Parliament. My office in Kabul was in Wazir Akbar Khan District, a stone throw away from the British Embassy.  It was as safe as could be in Afghanistan at the time. But, in fact, nowhere was safe. The Serena Hotel, where I used to go every Friday for coffee was bombed soon after, leaving many dead. Every time you left Afghanistan you were glad you were still alive. More than 3,500 coalition soldiers died, about two-thirds of them Americans, as of 2021 when the US withdrew from the country. The UK suffered the second-highest number of military deaths in the conflict behind the US, which saw 2,461 fatalities. Most of the 457 British troops who died serving in Afghanistan over a period of nearly 20 years were killed in Helmand - the scene of the heaviest fighting. Hundreds more suffered injuries and lost limbs. Trump’s insult to the dead, wounded and others who served in Afghanistan will not be forgotten easily. The US will find this out when it needs allies to support it, as it will sooner or later. The NATO alliance was already rattled by Trumps attempts to absorb Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally. But all the shenanigans around Greenland will blur into insignificance when compared to the insult to thousands of war dead and veterans. The bad taste will linger for a long time and spoils relations that have been built over decades. (click the picture to read the Monday Commentary in full).