The West’s appeasement of one of the world’s most vicious regimes and the betrayal of Camp Ashraf remain mysteries of our time, writes Christopher Booker.
The Sunday Telegraph – Of all the dominoes now falling or tottering across the Middle East, the biggest of all would be the murderous and potentially nuclear-armed dictatorship in Iran, where again last week Green Movement demonstrators were on the streets, after 89 executions in January. There are reports that some officers of the Revolutionary Guards, the regime’s equivalent of the KGB, are no longer willing to suppress the protesters by force.
Across the border in Iraq, thugs of the Guards’ Qods force are still laying siege to Camp Ashraf, which is home to 3,400 members of Iran’s largest opposition group, the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI).
In London last week, an all-party parliamentary group, including former ministers and the ex-Speaker Betty Boothroyd, heard calls from former heads of the FBI and the State Department’s counter-terrorism department for the US government to honour the personal guarantees of safety it gave in 2003 to the Ashraf residents in return for handing over their arms.
Since it has been such an embarrassing failure, the West’s continuing appeasement of one of the world’s most vicious regimes remains one of the mysteries of our time.
By Christopher Booker
