While nearly 50 days have passed since the Middle East crisis and the tragic war in Gaza, a global consensus has formed around the “two-state” solution as the path to achieving lasting peace in the Middle East. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas emphasizes this solution based on previous international agreements.
However, the one exception to this international consensus, which is the Iranian regime.
This opposition highlights the enmity of the Iranian regime towards the Palestinian government and the sole representative of the Palestinian people, namely the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by Mahmoud Abbas. It serves as evidence of the Iranian regime’s hostility towards peace in the Middle East. The immediate meaning of this hostility is that the Iranian regime does not see a future for itself except in times of crisis and war due to its inherently reactionary nature.
A prominent symbol of the powerful consensus on the two-state solution was the presence and speech of Mahmoud Abbas at the summit of Arab and Islamic countries’ leaders in Riyadh, to negotiate the situation in Gaza. However, Iranian regime president Ebrahim Raisi, proposed the “one-state” solution during the same summit and, upon returning from the Riyadh conference, expressed opposition to the “two-state solution” while describing the “one-state solution” as a “completely democratic solution based on the participation of all Palestinians, including Muslims, Christians, and Jews, in determining their destiny.”
The Iranian regime opposes the two-state solution and instead advocates for a “one-state” option. In practice, by venting its anti-Israeli propaganda within the political scene, it dismisses the Palestinian government and its demands.
Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei has never been committed to the general public’s votes for the presidential option in elections. He even disqualified his own appointed officials to facilitate Raisi’s candidacy. Now, he has become vocal about the Middle East peace and the Palestinian government in a manner that defies general consensus. In this deceptive act to determine the fate of Palestinians, the only thing he is worried about is the survival of his regime.
response to a question from an Arab media reporter regarding the two-state solution and whether it is feasible given the current circumstances, Nasser Kanaani, the spokesperson for the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected the two-state solution and states that Iran believes the only solution to the Palestinian issue is the formation of a unified Palestinian government. (Source: State-run Iran Press news agency, November 13)
However, the reality is that the conflict of Khamenei’s regime regarding the two-state consensus has now become a mirror and symbol of isolation and the disgrace of religious fascism, meaning the promotion of hostility and antagonism instead of peace and the aspirations of Palestine.
But more importantly, this episode reveals the regime’s opposition to any kind of lasting peace because its survival depends fully on the continuation of war and conflict.
Continued hostilities provides the regime, and namely the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), with the pretext to funnel the wealth of Iran into its terrorist proxies and to continue sending weapons across the region. It also uses this conflict as an excuse to increase its repressive measures at home, which is evident in the growing wave of executions and arrests that have been happening in Iran since October 7.
With a lasting peace in place, there will no longer be any reason for the regime to continue its warmongering. In fact, without an active war, the IRGC will lose its raison d’etre. This is why Iran’s regime can never be any part of a peace deal or a solution that leads to security and stability in the region.