Standing on the right side of history: simple but difficult Resistance is not conditioned by regimes.

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Seyed Majid Emami, I.R.Iran

Resistance is not a military concept that can be destroyed by bombs, missiles, terror or even genocide. Resistance is born from the feeling and perception of oppression, usurpation, discrimination and arrogance, and is not even a prerogative of a particular nation or state.

The geography of Resistance is global. It is not ideological, so it cannot be divided into good and bad, like good terrorism and bad terrorism! Resistance is a meaningful feeling that is being experienced by today’s men and women: even if it can be abandoned and forgotten among the pleasures of everyday life, it always exists. Resistance must be sought in its intergenerational life and birth. Many Palestinian fighters were born when, according to the great powers, the Arab-Israeli war was dismantled with compromise and the promise of forming two states: when three million refugees were about to be forgotten forever, the refugee camps became schools of freedom and patriotism, and a new generation of resistance leaders rose from the ruins of the Palestinian camps in the region. In Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe, in the colonized countries before World War II and other anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial movements, the value and meaning of Resistance returned to the common sense of modern man, and in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 it became the voice of a soulless world. However, the leading front of Resistance today is Palestine, because it is condemned to the most blatant lie and the most obvious oppression of our era.

The leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who himself was an anti-dictatorship fighter and spent years in prison and exile, sees Resistance as neither warmongering nor intransigent, but rather the only path to achieve sustainable peace in a world where greed, deceit, occupation and banned weapons still exist. If a world free from injustice and oppression was so easily possible, then why did the greatest wars in history take place despite the efforts of European men based on science, technology and wisdom? Europe itself has experience with occupation: occupations that not only deprive people of their right to citizenship and settlement on their ancestral lands, but also deprive them of their natural right to life.

Can we remain silent in the face of occupation, colonialism, oppression and plunder? The contemporary history of the Middle East can be distorted and taught incompletely in schools, but dignity and the right to life cannot be ignored! Resistance is natural because it is the last guarantor of human rights. Where regimes, organizations, conventions and international campaigns fail to achieve sustainable peace, resistance is the most effective and natural way to return to a happy and peaceful life for the oppressed and the occupied. But why is this obvious fact so complicated and misrepresented?
Since men have existed, the oppressed have existed and the oppressors have existed. And since oppressors have existed, humanity has been divided into two parts: those who oppress or support the oppressors, even with their silence and indifference, and those who, instead, take the side of the oppressed. Everywhere in the world, at any historical moment, men have fallen into one of these two categories, yesterday as today. But today, at a time when oppressors appear incessantly on the screens of all televisions and cell phones around the world while carrying out their crimes with impunity, the choice of which side to join should be simple, even natural. Yet, while the massacres in Gaza continue without interruption, while women and children are dying in Lebanon, while entire families are starving in Yemen, there are still few who defend them by fighting the oppressors.

The Resistance had the courage to make this heroic choice, recognizing its human duty. It was certainly not a choice of convenience, since the enemy is strong and ruthless, nevertheless it was the only truly human choice that could be made. And this choice has united different ideologies and positions, placing the Sunnis alongside the Shiites, the Twelvers with the Zaidites, making them a single and solid wall in defense of the oppressed: the stones that make up this wall are different from each other, but together they find strength and courage. Lebanon is different from Gaza, Iran is different from Syria and Iraq is not Yemen, but among themselves the members of the Resistance have agreed to respect these differences and not to impose their ideological position on anyone. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, whose territory represented a geographical bridge that united the two extremes of the Resistance, was an important element in the fight against the Zionist occupiers, therefore Iran – according to the logic of the Western powers – could have intervene in its defense and stop the advance of the cutthroats. Instead, the Islamic Republic, not having received the backing of Assad, who ignored all of its advice, respected the sovereignty of Syria, even if this meant to go against its own interests. The Resistance suffered a serious blow with the loss of Syria, but its credibility and integrity remained intact, indeed they were reinvigorated. The Resistance will continue its human duty, which is the fight against the oppressor, because even if the stone of Syria has rolled down the wall that defends the oppressed, it has not yet collapsed and will not collapse.

Resistance is both anti-colonialist and anti-tyranny, but every rational mind confirms that as long as there is colonialism, imperialism, war-making and occupation, there will be no time to also fight tyranny. In Iran’s political experience, the people and Islamic and national movements first encountered colonialism. During the Qajar era we had tyranny, but colonialism was a greater danger. We certainly must also rise up against tyrannies: the establishment of democratic systems based on the will of the nations is indeed desirable for the Resistance. But the first duty of Resistance is to recognize and fight the greater danger.
Unfortunately, with the fall of the previous Syrian government, significant parts of the Syrian territory were occupied, adding to the crimes of the occupiers over the past decades. The Resistance hopes for the formation of a democratic government in Syria that will, above all, restore Syria’s national sovereignty. Just as in Palestine, any group that does not care about national sovereignty has betrayed the nation and history itself.
Based on this logic, Resistance is never ashamed or hopeless in the face of human society, because it is neither chained to any nation or regime nor limited to existing global orders. Resistance itself is the new order of our region and the world, and as long as oppression exists, Resistance will be alive. 

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