A rare indirect exchange between an Iranian official and an Israeli scholar took place last week, as high-ranking diplomat and former foreign minister and vice president Mohammad Javad Zarif responded to Thamar E. Gindin, an Israeli scholar and Iran expert, following a video she published in Persian.
Gindin’s video was a response to claims made by Zarif during a February speech in front of Iranian students, in which he accused Israel of forging an enmity with Iran to ‘make up for the peace signed with Arabs’ as part of the Oslo Accords.
“During the 1990s, when the Zionist regime began negotiating with the Arab world, they needed to change the narrative of enmity,” Zarif said in his speech. “They had made up a narrative in which Arabs were the enemies, and suddenly Iran became the enemy.”
Zarif continued: “Since Israel needed an enemy, they had to invent an enemy somewhere else,” alleging that Prime Minister Rabin himself was quoted as saying that Iran was the substitute to the Arabs. Strikingly, Zarif also claimed that Israel was also harnessing a “false Biblical narrative” from the Book of Esther to propagate the narrative of Iranians who were trying to kill the Jews, while “it was in fact the other way around.”
Following this speech, Gindin recorded a video addressing Zarif directly, responding to his claims and challenging Zarif to present any proof for his quotes of Rabin.
FILE PHOTO: Iran's Foreign Minister (at the time) Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon August 14, 2020. (credit: DALATI NOHRA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
FILE PHOTO: Iran's Foreign Minister (at the time) Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon August 14, 2020. (credit: DALATI NOHRA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
Then, to the surprise of many, Zarif directly referred to Gindin’s video in an interview with Iranian host Mohammad Fazali in a rare instance of acknowledgment, referring to the Israeli scholar as “a Persian-speaking Israeli lady.”
In his new interview, Zarif doubled down on his claims, quoting an entry from Columbia University’s Encyclopedia Iranica which claimed the same about Rabin’s intentions. Zarif also maintained that Israel’s enmity towards Iran in the 1990s was the first time when Iran was ‘free to breathe’ after a decade of war, and accused Gindin of continuing the line of bashing at Iran’s image “even with a lovely tone”.
‘A regime lobbyist writing up an encyclopedia entry’
The entry “Israel i. Relations With Iran” in the Encyclopaedia Iranica indeed reads:
“Israel’s vision of the new Middle East order came at the expense of Iran since Yitzhak Rabin believed that the Israeli population would be unlikely to accept peace with the Arabs unless a greater and more ominous threat, namely Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, was looming in the horizon. Moreover, the Arab states would be more inclined to make peace with Israel if they felt more threatened by Iran’s fundamentalist ideology than by Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its nuclear arsenal.”
“I went on to read the said article Zarif was referring to,” Gindin told The Jerusalem Post, still surprised by the Iranian official’s direct acknowledgment of her video. However, Gindin pointed out the identity of one of the writers of the said entry. “When you ask yourself who this mind-reading writer is, that wrote up this article, you find that this section was authored by none other than Trita Parsi, the founder of the National American Iranian Council (NIAC), perceived as the pro-Islamic Republic lobby in the US”
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Gindin continued: “It strikes me as ironic that a lobbyist for the most anti-Israel regime was chosen to write up an entry regarding Iranian-Israeli relations. Besides, the entry itself has no real references to Rabin ever mentioning such a goal.”
According to Gindin, the encyclopedia entry does bring an accusation made by Israeli scholar Ephraim Inbar who claimed that Rabin was ‘playing [the Iranian threat] more than it was deserved in order to sell the peace process;’ but other than that no tangible source was brought to attribute such a quote to the former Israeli Prime Minister. In this context it should be noted that contrary evidence from Dr. Haim Assa, a close advisor to Rabin, quoted the Israeli Prime Minister as dismissing the Iranian threat and deeming it “an American issue.”
“In any case,” Gindin continued, “I am very excited to have had this exchange with Zarif, whom I see as an intelligent persona, as opposed to the regime’s loud mouthpieces. I just wish he would stop telling lies about Israel, and remember that it was Khomeini who first called for the destruction of the Jewish State - and Israel was the one who mirrored this call, as the entry correctly states.”.