Mike Oettle’s lies about Iran correspond with the prejudices felt by many white South Africans against Iran.
I would characterise these lies as a form of Zionist “hasbara” — though it is possible that he is also influenced by the swill drooling out of the US government these days.
If every lie Oettle has told were a truth, it would still not in any way justify the Zionist and US murder of Iranians.
Notwithstanding, the purpose of telling these lies is to bewilder the public into supporting brutal and murderous actions against the people of Iran, so the lies should be called out.
No attack has been launched from Iran against any country anywhere unless that other country first attacked Iran, as happened in 1980 when Iraq, supported by various Gulf tyrannies and by the US, invaded Iran without provocation.
All Iranian attacks on Israel followed prior Israeli aggression.
This is a truth which Oettle denies because it suits him to do so.
Because Iran supports organisations outside its borders, one might ask if those organisations have attacked countries.
This is more complex. The three which Oettle cites are Hamas, Hezbollah and what he calls “Houthi”, a Yemeni organisation called Ansar Allah. All three are religious organisations.
Hezbollah was founded after the Zionists invaded and occupied southern Lebanon without provocation to butcher the Palestinian resistance there with the assistance of Lebanese Nazis (the Falangists who slaughtered the inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps).
Because occupied Lebanon was predominantly Shi’ite Muslim, it is unsurprising that Hezbollah was also predominantly Shi’ite, and because Iran is predominantly Shi’ite and its government overwhelmingly so, it is unsurprising that the Iranians offered aid to their co-religionists in driving out the gangsters who had invaded their country.
Unfortunately, the Zionists continued to occupy small parts of southern Lebanon which has remained a sticking-point preventing peace from being made — though because the Zionists have shown no willingness to honour any agreement made with any non-Zionist it is hard to see how that could last for long.
The killing of the US (and French and Italian) occupation forces brought in to assist the Israelis in occupying southern Lebanon was a natural action on the part of Hezbollah and was predicted by all serious observers.
If you want to support gangsters, expect to be treated like a gangster.
Hamas was founded in the late 1980s in protest against the criminal Zionist occupation of Palestinian territory.
It was and is a Sunni Muslim organisation, which the Zionists tolerated because they were trying to undermine the secular Fatah movement which then seemed the main force of resistance to Zionist occupation.
Eventually the Zionists were able to co-opt Fatah and began attacking Hamas, supporting an attempted coup against Hamas after it won the Palestinian elections in the Gaza Strip in 2006.
For the last 20 years, after the Zionist/Fatah coup failed, the Zionists have been murdering civilians in Gaza and breaking agreements with Hamas while murdering their leaders, a process which escalated into systematic genocide in 2023.
Iran, despite religious differences, has offered Hamas limited support, which is its right, and of course Hamas is entitled to defend itself against the Zionists (whether its behaviour is sensible is another question).
Ansar Allah is a Shi’ite organisation in Yemen.
Yemen has been in a state of civil war for decades, and after the Yemenis successfully overthrew their dictator, Ansar Allah attempted to pick up the pieces.
The Saudis, who are Wahhabi Sunnis, viciously opposed to the Shi’a movement, invaded Yemen to suppress Ansar Allah, only to be defeated.
They then called on the US to assist them, and the US bombed Yemen for a decade without suppressing Ansar Allah.
After the Zionist genocide in Gaza began, however, Ansar Allah began threatening to attack ships carrying cargoes to the Zionist regime on the correct grounds that these cargoes were assisting in genocide, and the US sent warships to suppress Ansar Allah, a project which failed.
Thus the Iranians have been supporting freedom fighters from weak nations against overwhelming Zionist and Wahhabi oppression.
One may argue that their religious tenets are unappealing. However, since Oettle supports the Zionists and the Christian Zionist zealots in the US, he is being hypocritical if he opposes the Iranians for acting on their religious principles.
The USS Cole was not attacked by Iranians, as Oettle claims, but by al-Qaeda, a Wahhabi Sunni organisation headed by the late Osama bin Laden, who violently opposed the Shi’ite Islam.
There was a communist movement in Iran which fought a guerrilla war against the tyrannical Pahlavi regime until it was overthrown, predominantly by the Shi’ite working class under the leadership of the Shi’ite Ayatollah Khomeini.
However, this does not mean that there was any connection between Shi’ism and communism (there is none, contrary to Oettle’s illiterate fantasies falsely claiming Soviet support for Islamic Iran).
The Chinese communist connection with Iran is essentially due to Iran having the world’s largest oil reserves and being willing to work with anyone who is not psychopathically opposed to it as the US and the Zionists are.
The economic weakness of Iran is due largely to US economic sanctions against that country, sanctions supported by Europe and by many other countries, including SA, because the US punishes anyone who trades with Iran.
Nevertheless, Iran has managed to build itself into a formidable economic power, a member of the Brics+ organisation and the predominant military force in west Asia, which shows remarkable competence on the part of its government.
It is all but inconceivable that the Shi’ites in Iran have given up their religious beliefs as Oettle claims; nothing, certainly not any socio-economic dissatisfaction with the government, would be likely to do that and there is no evidence of it.
Most opposition forces in Iran, such as the Baluchis and the Kurds, are Sunni Muslims.
Thus Oettle’s claim that support for Islam has fallen to 20% is probably a product of Sunni bigotry (Wahhabis claim that the Shi’ites aren’t really Muslims) and also a product of his own religious prejudices and ethnic bigotry.
There is little sign of social fracturing in Iran despite massive aggression after decades of massive destabilisation.
I hope that this little examination of Oettle’s lies is not too boring.
I think that it shows that Oettle cannot be trusted to tell the truth about Iran (and there are sadly other areas where he displays the same traits, including wide-ranging ignorance without realising how ignorant he is).
As for his claim to care about the people of Iran, his happiness to see Iranian children murdered by Zionist and US aggressors surely tells all we need to know about his compassionate nature.
- Mathew Blatchford, University of Fort Hare
