by: Ali Keshavarzi
Source: San Antonio Express
In a recent article in the Washington Times, James Morrison correctly points out that in confronting Iran, we are not limited to either accepting a nuclear Iran or bombing the country. Instead, we can support the Iranians in their quest for democracy.
In 1997, the Clinton administration blacklisted the democratic Iranian resistance to please former President Mohammad Khatami, working under the illusion that the mullahs could change. Today we are paying for that mistake by having to confront a regime that seeks nuclear weapons and kills innocent people in Iraq.
Also, in 1979, America diplomats were taken hostage and held for 444 days in Tehran.
In 1983, a truck loaded with explosives blew up in front of the American Embassy in Beirut. On Nov. 4, 1986, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the president-to-be of Iran, said the blow the U.S. received in Lebanon "is attributed to us and it should be."
Five years later, on July 20, 1991, the former Revolutionary Guards Corps minister, Mohsen Rafiqdoost, admitted, "The TNT and ideology (for the Beirut bombing of Iraq Marine barracks) were sent there from Iran."
On Aug. 28, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared a "readiness to fill the great power vacuum" in the region.
A few weeks later, he told the U.N. General Assembly, "I officially declare that the era of post-Second World War relationships have ended. Palestine and Iraq will be cleared of the occupiers and the people of Europe and America will be free of the pressures of the Zionists."
The West’s allies are not the mullahs, but the members of the Iranian resistance who used their enormous base to provide the international community with vital information on Iran’s clandestine nuclear sites in 2003 for the first time.
This year, the National Council of Resistance of Iran and Mojahedin e Khalg, or MEK, provided the world with details about Iran’s terrorist training camps and a list of 32,000 Iranian proxies in Iraq. Furthermore, they unified the Iraqi people to fight terrorism and Iran’s interference.
Iranians do not want the mullah’s regime. Only last month, 40 people were executed in public. Jails are overflowing with political prisoners. Students, workers and teachers are on strike almost every day.
Our options are: Accept a nuclear-armed Iran, fight another war or recognize Iranians in their struggle against the mullahs for a secular democracy.
As resistance leader Maryam Rajavi underscored: The overthrow of the mullahs’ regime is indispensable to bringing peace to the Middle East region. We should aim for the latter, and we should seek removal of the Iranian resistance from the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list.
This course of action is recommended by members of Congress from both parties and is long overdue.
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Ali Keshavarzi, a member of the Iranian American Society of Texas, , has been a health care professional in San Antonio for more than 20 years.
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