These Latin American countries didn’t denounce Iran’s Israel attack. Shame on them! | Opinion

The self-defined “progressive” presidents of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia have failed to join the rest of the democratic world in explicitly condemning Iran’s attack on Israel, and — ironically — keep pretty much silent about Iran’s official discrimination against women and gays.

The leaders of the G-7 group of democratic industrialized nations — the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada — and the secretary general of the 32-nation Organization of American States have issued separate statements saying that they “unequivocally condemn” Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel, and expressing their “solidarity” with Israel.

But the presidents of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia failed to explicitly condemn Iran’s attack with 200 drones and missiles against Israel. Instead, they produced vague statements calling for peace on earth, which seemed to focus on preventing an Israeli retaliation against Iran.

“Let’s hope that the conflict in the Middle East doesn’t escalate; war is irrational, a synonym of suffering and death,” the Mexican prsident wrote in X, formerly Twitter, after the attack. At a press conference Monday, Lopez Obrador added that Mexico’s position “is not condemning either side, but to seek dialogue.”

In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked that “all sides” in the conflict refrain from new attacks. Brazil’s Jewish Confederation responded that Lula’s statement was “unfortunate” and “frustrating.”

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro criticized the OAS statement of condemnation of Iran’s attack as “geopolitical propaganda.” Petro, who has also failed to strongly condemn the Oct. 7 attack of Hamas terrorists that left more than 1,200 civilians dead in Israel, went on to blame Israel for the tragedy unfolding in Gaza.

It’s ironic that these self-proclaimed “progressive” leaders, just like the dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, almost never talk about Iran’s record as one of the world’s worse human rights offenders.

Iran’s fundamentalist Islamic regime prohibits women from walking on the streets without a head veil, doesn’t allow women to get a passport or leave the country without permission from their husbands, forces women to sit in the back of buses, and has laws punishing homosexuality with the death penalty, a Sept. 14 Time magazine story reported.

Women can be forced to marry at age 9, and their court testimonies and inheritances are deemed worth half that of men, the report said.

On March 8, a United Nations fact-finding mission on Iran issued its first report, concluding that that women and young girls suffer “serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity.” The 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for opposing the mandatory hijab veil rule sparked a wave of protests around the world.

Going back to Iran’s attack on Israel, Iran says that it was in retaliation for Israel’s recent airstrike to an Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, which killed a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and 15 other people. Iran has long used proxy terrorist armies in Syria and other countries, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, to attack Israel.

Iran ‘s state-sponsored terrorism should be no minor issue in Latin America.

Last year, Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi made a five-day trip to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, during which he signed dozens of cooperation agreements.

Also last year, Iran’s defense minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani signed a bilateral cooperation agreement with Bolivia that is raising anxiety in Argentina, the country with the largest Jewish community in Latin America.

Argentine officials fear that Iranian military advisors in Bolivia could try a repeat of the devastating 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and wounded another 300. Argentina’s highest criminal court ruled April 12 that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah were responsible for the bombing.

But instead of emphatically condemning Iran’s terrorism and blatant disregard for international law and human rights, some self-proclaimed “progressive “ leaders in Latin America are becoming tacit accomplices of one of the world’s most retrograde regimes.

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