Good theocracy, bad theocracy
Human rights are unlikely to be a reason to break off diplomatic relations
It is hard to fathom why for the West there are good dictatorships and bad dictatorships, or friendly theocracies and enemy theocracies, but geostrategic debts can become inscrutable. This is the case of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two great enemies in the permanent cold war for the control of the Muslim world. The first, privileged partners of the United States, lead the Sunni block and the second ones the Shia crescent. The bitter competition between these two fearsome and opposing forces is capable of working the most unsuspected miracles, such as Israel's rapprochement to Riyadh, but the internal workings of their dictatorial regimes are sometimes stubbornly similar.
Despite the bad international image created by the United States and fuelled by the world press, the regime in Tehran is incomparably more liberal than its Saudi antagonist. Women study, vote, drive, exercise and even protest in the streets, while in the Saudi kingdom they are eternal minors. Both share, however, an inordinate penchant for imprisoning anyone who smells of opposition or whose detention could serve their interests, as do other dictatorships such as China or North Korea, where kidnap diplomacy has been a constant for years.
This week, British-Australian university professor Kylie Moore-Gilbert was released after spending 804 days in an Iranian prison, sentenced to 10 years in jail for espionage. Gilbert was exchanged for three Iranians kindly described by the ayatollahs' regime as "Iranian economic activists". In fact, they are three individuals connected to an attempted bombing in Thailand in 2012, according to Bangkok, aimed at killing Israeli diplomats. One of them was sentenced to life in prison, another to 15 years. Australia has declined to comment on the controversial exchange, but the Thai press reports that the Iranians left Bangkok on board a plane registered to an Australian security company.
Moore-Gilbert got tired of defending her innocence by all means at her disposal after almost three years spent in prison. Her status as a political prisoner, or a geostrategic hostage, was as outrageous as the fact that a country could hold a foreigner without a firm reason to use them as a bargaining chip. But you can't ask the Iranian theocracy to respect the most basic rights or to behave logically, just as you can't ask another political anomaly like Saudi Arabia, that Western ally capable of dismembering journalists on foreign soil with total impunity and, at the same time, selling an image of liberal progress bought into by journalists halfway around the world.
In the country of MBS, the Slaughterer, future heir to the kingdom, the supposed freedoms that women were acquiring remained in the headlines. Take, for example, 31-year-old Loujain al Hathoul, one of the best-known faces of the campaign that forced the regime to allow women to drive, and a courageous activist who went on to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The backward kingdom does not forgive such audacity: Al Hathoul was arrested three years ago on charges of spying and talking to foreign journalists and diplomats, and on Wednesday her case was transferred to the Specialised Criminal Court, created in 2008 to try crimes of terrorism, to the deep regret of family members and activists who fear that the judicial body will add new charges to her case. The judicial body has in fact become an instrument of pressure against human rights activists and dissidents, i.e. another body of internal repression.
The Loujain case could be a litmus test for Joe Biden's mandate. Her face is now appearing in public spaces in Washington, as well as in some European capitals, thanks to the work of activists who are keeping her case alive. Nine Democratic senators, along with Republican Marco Rubio, demanded the release of the activist as well as other women in the same situation, but Washington's priority now is to sign a new nuclear pact with Iran in order to deactivate this threat. Human rights are unlikely to be a reason to break off diplomatic relations even if they can be instrumentalised to unleash wars in their name. Hypocrisy is no longer a fault; it is simply a feature of international diplomacy.
