Simultaneous with the trial of Iran’s incarcerated diplomat-terrorist, Assadollah Assadi, and his three accomplices in Belgium for an attempted bombing of the opposition’s rally in 2018, Simay-e Azadi, an Iranian opposition satellite channel, interviewed some renowned politicians.
Many of these figures had participated at the “Free Iran” gathering in 2018 in Paris, held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). This gathering, and its keynote speaker, the NCRI’s president-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, were Assadi and his accomplices’ targets.
The following is the interview by Rt. Hon. David Jones, a former Minister in the United Kingdom and Member of Parliament, with Simay-e Azadi.
David Jones’ Interview
There is growing concern internationally about the activities of Iranian diplomats on soil overseas, including in particular in Europe. As I speak, an Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, is on trial in Antwerp for the attempted murder of Maryam Rajavi and several other delegates at a conference at Villepinte near Paris. Interestingly, Assadi appears not to be denying the allegations that are made against him, which are essentially that he brought a quantity of dangerous explosives from Tehran to Vienna on a scheduled airplane and then handed them over to a number of other Iranian associates at a Pizza Hut in Luxembourg. His defense appears to be entirely that he’s entitled to diplomatic immunity and therefore, because the case is not yet finished, I don’t want to comment further on that. However, this is just the latest of a number of similar incidents where Iranian diplomats have apparently been implicated in terrorist plots on European soil. In 2018. The Iranian ambassador to Tirana was expelled because of an attempt on the life again of Maryam Rajavi and several other delegates at an event at Ashraf-3 in Albania and then again in the same year the Danish government called for sanctions against Iran as a consequence of a terrorist incident on Danish soil, which was apparently perpetrated by an Iranian diplomat.
These incidents show quite clearly that Iran is engaged systematically in a program of terrorist activity in countries overseas aimed largely at Iranian nationals with whom it has differences. This is not a state of affairs that can be allowed to continue. And the time has come, I think, and a lot of my colleagues do as well, where Iran is told quite clearly that unless this activity stops, then sanctions will be imposed against Iran and diplomatic relations will, if necessary, also be terminated. These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a pattern of activity and it’s quite clear that that activity is being orchestrated from the highest possible levels in the Iranian regime. So Iran, I believe, is now at a crossroads, it can decide whether it wants to behave like a respected and respectable member of the international community or whether it wants, as increasingly appears to be the case, to become an international pariah with whom most civilizations will not deal. That is a decision that Tehran has to make. And I believe that the time it has to make it is now.
