By: Kayhan Int’l
A couple of days ago, we celebrated the 402nd anniversary of the Iranian navy’s resounding triumph over the Portuguese intruders who had occupied Bahrain, seized Hormuz, and for decades were terrorizing the Persian Gulf coasts.
Did the victory of Shah Abbas’ naval forces ensured peace and prosperity in the Persian Gulf for the next four centuries?
Sadly, the answer is negative. The driving out of the Portuguese and return of Bahrain to motherland Iran did not leave any permanent imprint. The result is the current pathetic situation that has allowed a new breed of intruders to set up the CENTCOM terrorist bases on the southern side of the Persian Gulf.
The Safavid Dynasty, which with the support of the ulema and the people had transformed Iran into a powerfully stable empire for over two centuries wielding positive influence in the fields of culture, religion, art, architecture, literature, and trade on a vast area stretching from Jabal al-Amel (present day Lebanon) on the Mediterranean shores in the west to the sultanates of the Deccan or Peninsular India washed by the waters of the Bay of Bengal in the east, declined, along with Iranian guardianship of the Persian Gulf.
Though Nader Shah Afshar briefly stabilized the Persian Gulf through Iranian presence on its southern coasts as well, the Zand and the Qajar dynasties that followed his short-lived rule badly neglected the importance of this vast southern body of water for Iran’s security and independence.
The vacuum was exploited by colonial Britain, which after preventing any intrusion from Basra by the Ottoman Turks who had occupied Iraq, soon turned the Persian Gulf into a virtual second English Channel.
London gradually extended its illegal hold on both the Iranian and Arabian coasts of the Persian Gulf. It penetrated deep inland to set up petty Sheikhdoms on its southern shores, including the placing of Bahrain under a pirate clique. On the north it turned the Qajar weaklings in Tehran into mere vassals before replacing them with its own slave, an illiterate soldier of obscure origin called Reza Khan, who was ordered to call his illegitimate regime ‘Pahlavi’.
In the 1960’s Britain, no longer a world power, handed over the Persian Gulf’s control, along with its tutelage of the unrepresentative regimes of the region to the US, which through the slavish Pahlavi potentate became the paramount power.
The above is a brief background of the strategic water body on Iran’s southern coast which since time immemorial to our present era (beginning from the Babylonians in Mesopotamia and the Egypt-based Greco-Roman cartographer Claudius Ptolemy’s drawing of probably the first map of the known world), has been called “Persian” – irrespective of its classification as a ‘sea’ or a ‘gulf’.
In February 1979 a new era ushered in for the Persian Gulf and the whole region (if not the world) with the triumph of the Islamic Revolution under the dynamic leadership of Imam Khomeini (RA), who cleared the country of the undesirable presence of the US.
Independent Iran made it clear that the Persian Gulf cannot and should not be a playground of outside forces. This brotherly advice the rulers of the littoral states did not heed because of their obvious lack of faith in Islamic values and solidarity. They were and are too timid to tell the destabilizing Americans to leave for fears of being replaced through palace coups by brothers, nephews, and cousins, ever willing to grab power by pledging subservience to the Great Satan.
With its earnest appeals for regional solidarity and littoral peace falling on deaf ears, the Islamic Republic of Iran after overcoming Saddam’s 8-year US-dictated war and dismayed by the idiotic invitations of the unrepresented regimes to the US to increase its mischievous presence in the Persian Gulf, embarked solo on its resolve to solidify its sovereignty and security (and that of the region).
Thanks to the foresight of its leadership and the dedication of its people, today Iran has achieved self-sufficiency in all fields including the defence industry and the building of a powerful navy, equipped with state-of-the-art technology, to ensure national sovereignty as well as the “Persianness” of the Persian Gulf.
Tehran very well knows that the neighbourhood will not remain forever under client rulers who sooner than later have to give way to people’s power (especially in view of the treason of the current regimes in siding with the US-Zionist genocide in Gaza against public wishes and the blatant betrayal of the sanctity of al-Aqsa).
In other words, the days are not far for end of the US presence or more properly the CENTCOM terrorist hold on regional states and throughout West Asia, along with the cleansing of the cobweb called Israel, whose spidery tentacles have reached the Persian Gulf coasts due to the treachery of certain littoral regimes in allowing the Zionists to set up diplomatic and trade missions in their capitals.
To sum up, Iran will never permit the enemies to pollute the Persian Gulf’s pristine purity, its rich resources, its navigation safety, and its name.
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