CAIR Calls Iran Missile Barrage on Israel ‘Self-Defense’

Nihad Awad, head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), reportedly justified Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel over the weekend as a legitimate act of “self-defense” – a talking point provided by the Iranian regime that instantly became ubiquitous among pro-Palestinian activists.

Politico on Tuesday quoted Awad as one of several Muslim activists who said Iran’s massive but ineffectual attack was justified as “responding in self-defense” to a suspected Israeli airstrike on April 1 in Damascus that killed several high-ranking officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

A group tied to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei celebrated one of the slain IRGC officers, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, as a “martyr” who played a “strategic role” in the “planning and execution of Al-Aqsa Flood” – the name given by Palestinian terrorists and their supporters to the inhuman rape and murder spree Hamas perpetrated against Israeli civilians on October 7.

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Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart News

Awad threatened that President Joe Biden would “lose support of American Muslim and Arab communities,” according to Politico, if he did not take stances more opposed to Israel. Awad claimed that Biden also risked the loss of “a growing movement of Jewish Americans and others, including young people” as supporters without a stronger anti-Israel approach.

CAIR has been fairly influential in U.S. politics over the past two decades, even though it was declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.

The group’s public statements have turned increasingly extreme since the Hamas atrocities of October 7, which Awad also excused as an act of “self-defense.”

Awed went even further and applauded the October 7 atrocities as an oppressed people “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles” so they could “walk free into their own land” – where they proceeded to rape and murder over 1,200 innocent men, women, and children.

“Yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, had the right to defend themselves. Yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense,” Awad insisted in October, a line he is apparently sticking with by justifying Iran’s illegal actions as “self-defense” too.

Politico fretted that pro-Hamas extremists are threatening to tear the Democrat Party apart by threatening to bail on Biden’s reelection campaign if he does not abandon Israel. For example, attendees at a left-wing political conference in Chicago on Saturday burst into “cheers of support for Iran after it launched drone attacks against Israel.”

The group then began chanting “Hands off Iran!” while a reporter for Iranian state media worked on teaching them how to chant “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” in Persian.

The Anti-Defamation League on Sunday found many more examples of anti-Israel activists immediately embracing Iran’s rhetoric of “self-defense,” such as the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which said “Iran has a right to defend itself” against “Zionism’s ultimate ambitions.”

Groups that did not openly applaud Iran’s bloodlust for killing Jews generally contented themselves with parroting the “self-defense” line, the Anti-Defamation league reported:

The far-left International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) issued a statement saying that Iran’s attack on Israel was merely a response to the “bloodthirsty killing frenzy and expansionist aggression” that drove Israel to bomb Iran’s Syrian embassy. According to the ILPS, Iran’s response was a form of “legitimate defense,” and they called on supporters to prepare for “mass demonstrations is [sic] all possible regions to prevent U.S. war on Iran.”

Claiming that Iran was merely defending itself, the North Carolina Green Party played into an antisemitic trope about Jewish control and alleged that Congress is sympathetic to Israel because it has been “bought” by pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC: “Iran has a right to defend itself. Or does that only apply to Israel against anyone they want to take land from? Eyes on every member of Congress that has been bought and paid for by AIPAC.”

A group called “Madison for Palestine” lost its collective mind at Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Mark Pocan for merely suggesting that “everyone must stop aggressions,” including Israel, which he duly harangued for the alleged airstrike in Damascus.

“Iran is doing what the U.S. never will and retaliating against genocidal zionists – something you and your colleagues have openly supported against 40,000+ Palestinians in SIX MONTHS TIME ALONE. HOW DARE YOU demand the Palestinian resistance to stop defending themselves against this massacre!” Madison for Palestine members shrieked at Pocan.

Iran repeated its claim of “self-defense” at the United Nations on Tuesday, where it was joined by its partners in brutal tyranny, China and Russia. The Chinese at least threw in some rhetoric suggesting Iran should be satisfied with its almost completely ineffectual missile and drone attack and avoid “further escalation of tensions.”