Chandra Muzaffar || 15 June 2025

In the midst of Israel’s aggression against Iran, a lot of people have forgotten the underlying cause of the animosity between Israel and Iran — Iran’s opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. From 1979 itself when a new government emerged in Tehran, as a result of an immensely popular revolution, the leader of the new government, Imam Khomeini, proclaimed that the new Iran was totally opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the expulsion of a huge segment of the Palestinian population and the elimination of numerous Palestinian leaders committed to a sovereign, independent Palestinian state. The new Iranian leaders viewed Israel as a colonial enterprise linked to the British empire and as the product of a racist ideology called Zionism. This is why Iranian leaders for decades have regarded Israel as ‘illegitimate.’

To overcome its illegitimacy, Israel will have to repudiate Zionism, restore Palestinian rights and recognize Palestinian sovereignty. Israeli leaders have not only refused to do this. Their genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, their oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank, and their practice of apartheid against Palestinians ingeneral all prove that they have no intention of according even a modicum of justice to the people of the land.

Once justice is done to the Palestinians, the nuclear question in Iran will also be resolved. Neither Iran nor Israel nor any other state in West Asia, or anywhere else in the planet for that matter, should possess or manufacture nuclear weapons. The whole world should be nuclear weapons free. However, nuclear research and enrichment for peaceful purposes should be allowed under strict international rules and the disposal of nuclear waste should be managed with meticulous care.

Only if the Palestinian issue is settled on the basis of justice, and other related challenges are also overcome, will there be peace in West Asia and in the world. In a peaceful, relatively harmonious West Asia, Jews, Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs will flourish for the greater good of humanity and planet earth.

Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), an international NGO based in Malaysia, which seeks to critique global injustice and to develop an alternative vision of a just and compassionate civilisation guided by universal spiritual and moral values. He has published extensively on civilizational dialogue, international politics, religion, human rights and Malaysian society.