TEHRAN (Iran News) – Terrorism is a phenomena which threatens nations and governments and through the decades it has occurred in different forms and recently some version of it, economic terrorism, is dominating the world and makes the people in the world suffer of it.
If we have a look back at the history and meaning of terrorism, we see the word, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence to achieve political aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants (mostly civilians and neutral military personnel).The terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” originated during the French Revolution of the late 18th century but became widely used internationally and gained worldwide attention in the 1970s during the Northern Ireland conflict, the Basque conflict, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The increased use of suicide attacks from the 1980s onwards was typified by the 2001 September 11 attacks in the United States.
Gradually terrorism was used by the government and state terrorism emerged which was different from the terrorism which was committed by the individuals and groups. State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism conducted by a state against its own citizens or against another state. Some countries by resorting to this type of terrorism have tried to silence and eliminate their rivals and opponents.
Democracy and domestic terrorism and religious terrorism are of the other types of terrorism which are seen in the world which threaten the lives of the people worldwide, no matter it is developed or under developed countries.
But in recent decades, economic terrorism has emerged that Western countries and especially their leaders the U.S. have used it as a tool to dictate their wills on the nations. These countries, after any political development, punish their opponents with sanctions to put pressures on the governments and people in the countries to obey them blindly.
The Islamic Republic of Iran since its first day of establishment has been the victim of different types of terrorism and experienced types of terrorism and currently it is challenging with the economic terrorism that the U.S. is leader of this sort of terrorism and has imposed sanctions to bring down the Islamic system and the people in the country.
Some other countries and independence loving states are also suffering from the Western economic terrorism, better known sanctions, like North Korea, Syria and Yemen, just because they do not want follow the U.S. footstep.
On Monday Syria’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Bashar al-Jaafari lambasted U.S.-led sanctions against his country, saying the bans amount to economic terrorism and have catastrophic impacts on Syria’s human rights situation.
Jaafari said in an address to the United Nations Human Rights Council that the coercive economic measures by the US target Syrian people’s livelihood and their right to life and welfare.
Jaafari also said the terrorist war against Syria, foreign occupation of its territory and the external support for terrorism have caused catastrophic impacts on the human rights situation in Syria.
“The U.S., western coercive economic measures have also escalated the catastrophic impacts which targeted the Syrian citizen’s livelihood and his/ her right in life and welfare,” the senior Syrian diplomat said in a statement.
He added that the Western coercive measures have turned into economic terrorism targeting the Syrian citizens in their right to life, health, education, and development in all of it forms.
On the same day, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi stressed that the U.S. sanctions have not only affected the supply of medicine, medical equipment, and humanitarian items but have also disrupted the work of the UN.
The United States re-imposed its draconian sanctions against Iran after the administration of former President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of a 2015 international nuclear agreement.
Earlier in the month, Takht-Ravanchi blamed the cruel and unilateral sanctions imposed by the US for Iran’s failure to make the payment on its arrears to the world body, but expressed hope that the suspension of the country’s voting right would end soon.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly urged the world to take a serious action against this type of sanctions but unfortunately the international bodies have dealt this issue with a deaf ear and it seems for them only physical and conventional terrorism is just considered as terrorism and it is not important for them millions of people in the countries to suffer from hunger and lack of medicines due to sanctions and economic terrorism.
It is time for the world to rise against this type of terrorism which is worse than traditional one because this type of terrorism threatens the lives of millions in countries and it should be stopped. Unfortunately even the United Nations sometimes rides the same horse that Western and arrogant countries do, and slap the governments and the countries with sanctions and intentionally or unintentionally cooperate with economic terrorists in the world.
Nations should work hard to be real independent countries in order to thwart the effects of modern style of terrorism which is used as an effective weapon by some certain countries because as long as they want to be independent, they will suffer this type of sophisticated and civilized form of terrorism which is even supported by the so called pro human-rights defending countries.
