Under the title “The total lack of shame with the end of Khamenei”, journalist Ricardo Simões Ferreira writes, in Diário de Notícias, a text that ends up illustrating, ironically, his own premise. By trying to associate the Left Bloc with the Tehran regime with mere insinuations, the author ignores the facts: the Bloc was the first party to approve a vote of solidarity with the Iranian democratic opposition, condemning theocratic repression without ambiguity. This stance is even recognized by the Liberal Initiative.
Where was the democratic zeal when, last week, the PSD and Chega rejected in Parliament the vote of condemnation presented by the Bloc for the arrest and torture of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Narges Mohammadi? For a considerable part of the Portuguese right, the defense of Human Rights in Iran is just a rhetorical accessory to attack the left.
Dissatisfied with the amnesia exercise, the author travels to Spain to exhume the corpse of a lie: the alleged Iranian financing of Podemos. It curiously omits that the Spanish courts repeatedly filed such complaints because they were based on “dirty judicial warfare” and false testimonies. Recycle this fake news to suggest financial flows for the Portuguese left is, admittedly, an innovation in the already prolific academy of national lies.
The incompatibility between the left and theocracy is structural. As the Bloc’s leaders have reiterated, denouncing the Iranian dictatorship does not imply allegiance to Trump’s military adventurism or the ongoing genocide in Gaza. While the author revels in these fantasies, the world watches the real horror: the bombing of the Shajarah Tayyebeh school, which took the lives of more than 160 people, most of them children. Faced with this tragedy, the Portuguese Government allows the use of the Lajes Base for unilateral US operations, in a clear violation of International Law and Portuguese law.
Wishing for the end of a tyranny does not require applauding the bombing of a people. Farah Pahlavi, the former empress of Iran, was quick to reject external interference, arguing that Iran’s destiny belongs to the Iranians. As highlighted by Pedro Sánchez, who the author is unlikely to accuse of being an agent of Khamenei, “the question is not whether we are in favor of the ayatollahs, no one is, the question is whether we are on the side of international legality and, therefore, peace”.
Contrary to what Simões Ferreira’s prose romanticizes, the left has no affinity with the ayatollahs. Our commitment is to freedom, Human Rights and peace, which the author could have verified through a quick search on a search engine.
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