The controversy over the recent visit to Brussels by the mayor of Tehran, the ultra-conservative Alireza Zakani, to attend a congress with local authorities from all over the world does not cease and threatens to upset the fragile balance of forces in the different Belgian governments.
The image of Zakani, honored by the Brussels authorities, who paid for his stay and that of his abundant entourage in a luxury hotel in the capital, stirred up Belgian public opinion, which still had the emaciated image of the emaciated image fresh in its retina. aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, released on May 26 after 455 days in captivity thanks to a prisoner exchange in which Belgium handed over Asadollah Assadi, convicted of terrorism.
The indignation increased after the dissemination of images of members of the Persian delegation shamelessly filming the Belgo-Iranians who demonstrated against the presence in the country of Zakani, a former presidential candidate and former head of the Basij student organization, a paramilitary body attached to the Guard. of the Revolution who was sanctioned last year by the EU for shooting at students in the latest riots. Everything that has since been known about the visit has only aggravated the scandal.
The opposition immediately asked for explanations. The Secretary of State for the Brussels Region, the Flemish Socialist Pascal De Smet, responsible for Foreign Affairs, resigned on Saturday but the storm does not abate. Yesterday, both the Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, and the Foreign Minister, Hadja Lahbib, had to give explanations to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the federal Parliament. Although when the controversy broke out, the minister, indignant, accused De Smet of “dirtying” the city’s image, it later emerged that after a phone call between the two, the ministry sent an e-mail to the regional leader in which it said that Lahbib would not block the granting of visas. Outraged, Deputy Prime Minister Georges Gilkinet, an environmentalist, accused her of “giving away visas like they were chocolates.”
Against the ropes, De Croo closed ranks yesterday with Lahbib and resorted to realpolitik to justify himself. According to the prime minister’s account, the Government of Brussels informed him at the beginning of April of its intention to invite the mayor of Tehran to the Brussels Urban Summit, a congress with mayors of cities with more than one million inhabitants. The Belgian Executive was in full negotiations to obtain the release of Vandecasteele and other Europeans (three more returned on June 2) and advised De Smet against inviting them. As has been said, however, after speaking with Lahbib, he decided to invite them and Zakani gladly agreed to attend the appointment.
Faced with the demand to issue visas for the Iranian delegation, De Croo agreed. Denying them permission at that time, he claimed yesterday, would have been “a humiliation” for Iran at a time when Belgium is keeping open channels of communication to try to free more prisoners. “A human life is worth a visa? Obviously yes ”, De Croo asked the deputies to justify his decision, admitting for the first time the relationship between the broadcast of the visit and the negotiations on prisoners. Lahbib, for his part, assured yesterday that the green light for the visit was not part of the negotiations for the release of Vandecasteele, but he qualified that this context cannot be ignored either.
The Government’s explanations have not satisfied Parliament. During a heated debate, Darya Safai, a member of the N-VA (conservative Flemish nationalists), recalled how she fled Iran 24 years ago after the police went looking for her at her parents’ house for demonstrating in Tehran. “Now I see the same thing in Brussels and I tell myself that I am not safe anywhere,” she said after accusing the government of “giving in” to Iranian blackmail and allowing Belgium to be “the playground for terrorists.”
Although De Croo’s involvement in defense of Lahbib is intended to ensure the survival of the Government, the so-called Vivaldi coalition that brings together seven parties (socialists, liberals and ecologists from Flanders and Wallonia, plus the Flemish Christian Democrats), the demands for resignation from the minister became more intense yesterday and not only from the ranks of the opposition, ecologists and socialists are highly critical of the contradictions in his story and his refusal to admit errors.
“Clearly, he did not tell everything,” the French-speaking socialist deputy Malik Ben Achour reproached him, alluding to his previous parliamentary appearance, when all the criticism focused on De Smet. “On two essential points he did not give us all the information and insists on presenting a selective, contradictory and partly erroneous version of the facts,” criticized the Flemish environmentalist Wouter De Vriendt (Groen). “He has lied to Parliament,” concluded N-VA MP Peter De Roover, who has tabled a motion calling for his resignation. Lahbib’s fate hangs by a thread but the forced resignation of the minister would mean the departure of the French-speaking liberals from the coalition and therefore the fall of the federal government.
