The armed attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the repressive terrorist arm of Iran’s sectarian mullahs, was carried out by a faction of the Ahwazi resistance, which demands the independence of the occupied Arab region that was annexed by Iran by force in the early 1900s. This aggression underlines the need to reexamine the term “occupied Arab territories”. For many years this term was used for the territories occupied by Israel, especially after the Assad regime sold the Golan.

However, the concept of occupied Arab territories has a larger dimension than the Palestinian territories, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms (Syrian and not Lebanese), all of which are illegally occupied by Israel. We must also include the Syrian Iskenderun, which Turkey annexed to its territory by force and which included its Arab population and the United Arab Emirates islands Abu Musa, Greater and Lesser Tunbs, which were forcibly occupied by the Iranian regime, which still occupies the province of Ahwaz, with the vast majority of the population belonging to Arab tribes. Spain, occupies 21 Moroccan islands as well as the cities of Melilla and Ceuta.

All of these lands are geographically Arab with an Arab population. Unfortunately, there is little demand for the liberation of Arab lands from before the Iranian and Turkish occupation. Special interests seem to be more important than the facts, no matter how clear the truth may be. The hypocrisy of the media discourse has meant that occupation by Israel is considered to be “different” from occupation by Iran and Turkey, although all the occupied lands are 100 percent Arab territories.

How sad and shameful is the message sent by the Palestinian organization Hamas to the Iranian regime in which it says that it regrets the attack against the Revolutionary Guards. How can Hamas convince itself that it is a resistance force when it is in the same trench as a criminal party and aggressor that boasts that it occupies four Arab capitals and has annexed Arab land by force and has no intention of negotiating or recognizing Arab rights. Hamas, like the Assad regime and Hezbollah’s terrorist organization, is in the hands of a regime that is occupying Arab territories.

This hypocritical discourse only serves to weaken the discourse of the honorable resistance to those who occupy any Arab land. The occupied Arab territories are all very precious and all are of the same importance, and anyone who distinguishes between one of them is not one of us.