Labour stalwart Sammy Meilaq brands PL MEP Daniel Attard ‘a liar’ over Iran stance

Labour Party veteran and former trade unionist Sammy Meilaq branded PL MEP Daniel Attard “a liar” over his comments on the United States’ war on Iran during a protest held in front of the US Embassy on Saturday.

In a comment shared with the BBC and reported by the Times, Attard had argued that the Iranian regime spent decades destablising the Middle East, sponsoring militias, and repressing its own people.

Attard’s argument was made in the context of his call for more “hard diplomacy” from the European Union, while raising questions about the “military operation” being carried out by the US and its chief ally in the Middle East, Israel.

“You are not a real socialist – we are the real socialists here, the ones who are here right now, protesting against this war,” Meilaq said, referring explicitly to Attard’s comments.

Arguing instead that “the root cause of this conflict” is the decades-long extraction of Iran’s oil by US and UK corporations, Meilaq was referring directly to the Western-backed violence which led to Iran’s Islamic revolution – which in turn, led to the hardline theocratic government that the US has marked as an enemy.

“It wasn’t enough for Daniel Attard to lie once. He needed to lie again. He said that the conflict is Iran’s fault after they destabilised the Middle East by sponsoring militia. This is an even bigger lie. Who is attacking who in this region? Is there anyone who destabilised the region more than the US and Israel?” Meilaq said, describing Israel in particular as “the undisputed and uncontested world champions of genocide.”

Several other organisers spoke at the protest, which was backed by nine NGOs who’ve been vocal about the unfolding crisis in the Middle East. As of today, 14 countries in the region have been sucked into the spiraling violence as Iran seeks to target US bases in the region after sustaining heavy aerial bombing.

Activists from Ġustizzja Għal Palestina, Grupp Newtralità u Paċi, and the Lebanese Advocates also spoke at the protest.

Joanna Jebaili, a US-Lebanese citizen, pleaded with US authorities to stop “spending American money to humiliate and annihilate” people in the Middle East, calling for “a liberation from the cycle of murder” that has gripped the region over decades of failed regime change policies.

Veteran activist and representative of Ġustizzja Għal Palestina, Yana Mintoff, called US President Donald Trump a hypocrite for claiming he wants to “punish people for bad behaviour when his own record is so bad.”

“We stand here in solidarity with children, men, women, all people who are experiencing so much anxiety and fear from these terror states,” Mintoff added.

Raphael Borg, from Grupp Newtralità u Paċi, described himself as “a Christian, a father, and an educator” and voiced his anger about how the US administration frequently adopts Catholic symbolism to justify war.

The protest was organised by a growing coalition of organisations seeking to pressure the Maltese government into unequivocally condemning the unfolding genocide in Palestine and the subsequent upheaval that has now spread to the rest of the region.