This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
JERUSALEM – An Iranian author and political commentator who recently spoke in the Qatari capital Doha, has caused no little consternation in his home country after he expressed "awe" at the number of young Iranians who "hate Palestinians."
"You'd be surprised today," Sadegh Zibakalam, who is also a professor at Tehran University, said in a video shared by Iran International. "Since Oct. 7, 2023, you'd be surprised at the number of Iranian who HATE Palestinians. What happened to that sympathy? It's gone – it's evaporated."
More shockingly still it was not just the apparent pent up hatred of Iranians toward Palestinians, but they also praised Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a kind of hero. He said he would have thought the person who told him such a thing as a prediction 15 months ago was out of their mind or talking nonsense. "But I saw it with my own eyes during the past 15 months, the degree of hatred of younger generation of Iranian against Palestinian. And their hero was Netanyahu."
He added, "Do you think they knew anything about Netanyahu and the Likud party, and the Hamas? No, no. They hate Palestinians because the Islamic leaders – they support Palestinians."
Last month, a viral video circulated on social media, showing a high school principal in Iran trying to get his students to chant,"Death to Israel," and, "Death to America," while the students instead replied, "Death to Palestine," reported Israel National News.
Iran's population of some 90 million people is young, with the median age being 33. It isn't too difficult a proposition to understand where Iran's young people are coming from; they have endured a teetering economy bent to the will of the mullahs in Tehran, which has been under the downward pressure of crippling sanctions – until the Biden administration hiatus – and might soon be again. While their own economy is deprived, the IRGC has spent billions of petrodollars on the vaunted "ring of fire" foreign policy to encircle Israel, and which the Jewish state managed to dismantle in large part – although by no means completely – in a few short weeks.
True to form, officialdom in Tehran was unimpressed with Zibakalam's pronouncement, with the Prosecutor's Office filing charges against the commentator.
"Due to recent baseless statements made by Sadegh Zibakalam, the Tehran Prosecutor's Office has filed charges against him," Mizan, Iran's judiciary news website, said on Tuesday, without providing further details of the charges.
The charges come after a video of his lecture, titled "The Trump presidency and the 46 years of hostility between Iran and the US," was widely shared on social media, according to Iran International.
"More than being worried about Trump and what Trump is going to do with Iran, I am worried about the situation in Iran – the sharp contradiction, the sharp conflict between the younger generation of Iranians and their hatred of literally anything which is tied to the Islamic Republic," Zibakalam said in a lecture at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha on President Trump's inauguration on January 20.
The commentator has previously been sentenced to 18 months in prison and a two-year ban from political activities for "propaganda against the system."
