Stockholm
Iran is by far the most dangerous threat to peace in the Middle East and beyond. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who has threatened to annihilate Israel. This threat is reinforced by the Islamic regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
And yet Sweden gives Tehran diplomatic cover. While most Western democracies want to increase pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt hesitates. He has even been trying to stall European Union deliberations on tougher sanctions. On his own blog he questioned June's U.N. Security Council resolution that provides the legal basis for the EU's sanction process. He even suggested supporting the nuclear-fuel swap deal with Iran hashed out in May by Brazil and Turkey, which voted against the U.N. resolution. The deal would have done nothing to stop Iran's illicit nuclear program but would have saved Tehran from additional sanctions.
Given Sweden's almost biblical belief in international institutions, Mr. Bildt's questioning of U.N. decisions would normally be considered sacrilege here. In this post-Christian Scandinavian country, the U.N. has replaced God as the new Supreme Being. Swedish governments, regardless of political leanings, have accepted the U.N. as the final arbiter and guide in international affairs, with an almost metaphysical reverence.
Sweden is also a country that traditionally promotes democracy movements around the world. And a truly democratic Iran would defuse tensions in the region. But Mr. Bildt, like U.S. president Barack Obama, does not proactively support Iran's democratic opposition, nor does he take human rights, including religious liberty, seriously in Iran.
When Swedish parliamentarian Lennart Sacredeus recently highlighted the increasing persecution of Christians in Iran, Mr. Bildt assured him that Sweden takes this issue seriously and as evidence referred to February's review of Iran's human rights record by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council. Of all the U.N. institutions, the Human Rights Council is probably the most dysfunctional, dominated by dictatorships who use their membership in this body to shield each other from scrutiny of their human-rights violations. One can accuse Mr. Bildt of many things, but he's certainly no naive simpleton who could possibly believe that the U.N. Human Rights Council would ever seriously take Iran to task.
Mr. Bildt's reluctance to pressure a regime that so brutally oppresses its own people also stands in stark contrast to his past record of speaking up against dictatorships, such as the Soviet Union, even when it was not politically correct. He has proved himself as a man committed to peace and nation-building, particularly during his years in the Balkans as high representative and U.N. special envoy.
But when it comes not just to Iran but the wider Middle East, Mr. Bildt has a tendency to be rather lenient to its many dictatorships, while attacking its only true democracy—Israel.
Last fall, for example, a Swedish tabloid ran a story without a shred of evidence accusing Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs. But Mr. Bildt refused to take a stand against this anti-Semitic campaign reminiscent of medieval blood libels. He then canceled a scheduled trip to Israel at a time when Sweden held the EU presidency. But only a few months later he gladly went to Syria, one of the worst dictatorships in the region and Iran's closest ally.
At the same time Mr. Bildt was in Damascus, Syria's dictator Bashar Assad also hosted President Ahmadinejad as well as the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. Only bin Laden was missing. During his visit, Mr. Bildt failed to bring up Syria's human-rights violations or its support for terrorism.
The Gaza-flotilla raid led to another Swedish-Israeli crisis. There were probably many people with good intentions on the convoy. But one of the ships was organized by IHH, a terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda. On that ship they sang Islamic songs inciting hatred and murder of Jews. After the raid, Mr. Bildt immediately flew to Istanbul to meet the two Swedish citizens who were on board and, despite video evidence proving that the "peace" activists had brutally attacked the Israeli soldiers, Mr. Bildt expressed his sympathy for the activists and their cause and equally quickly condemned Israel.
The Western world needs to unite to prevent a nuclear Iran and promote democracy and human rights in the Middle East. But Mr. Bildt seems to have a different agenda—and the wrong friends.
Mr. Tunehag is an editorial writer for Världen idag, a Swedish national newspaper.
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