In a transparent attempt to buy time, Tehran brazenly proposed the resumption in nuclear talks with European countries, which was promptly rejected by the Europeans and the United States.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, said Khamenei’s insistence was an ominous sign that the regime sought to acquire nuclear weapons in an obvious challenge to the international community’s resolve. She said that acquisition of nuclear weapons was indispensable to the clerical regime’s strategy of survival, adding that sponsoring terrorism and exporting Islamic fundamentalism to the Muslim world, in particular the domination of Iraq and enmity toward peace in the region, formed other elements of this strategy.
“Threats posed by the clerical regime to peace and tranquillity, is the flip side of the regime’s brutal violations of human rights in Iran,” she said. “The only way to end this serious challenge is democratic change in Iran. This change cannot be achieved by appeasing the mullahs or by external war. The Iranian people and their organized Resistance, which has fought for liberty and democracy in Iran for over a quarter century,” hold the key to change."
“Two decades of appeasement, and its main component, the terror label and restrictions imposed on the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), the main Iranian opposition force, have been the biggest obstacle to change in Iran. This policy has undermined the Iranian people’s efforts and encouraged the clerical regime to intervene in other countries, in particular Iraq. In a statement last April, over 2.8 million Iraqis emphasized that restricting the PMOI ‘has tipped the strategic balance power in favour of the Iranian regime in this sensitive region of the world.’”
Mrs. Rajavi pointed to world community’s detrimental policy of conciliation towards the mullahs and emphasized the need to refer immediately the clerical regime’s nuclear file to the UN Security Council and adopt comprehensive sanctions, as well as to revoke the terror designation of the PMOI. “Delay and hesitation in this regard will give the mullahs more time to build a nuclear bomb,” she warned.
Mrs. Rajavi noted that in addition to the clerical regime’s nuclear file, its sponsorship of terrorism and its record of systematic human rights violations, including 120,000 political executions, should be referred to the UN Security Council and the regime’s leaders should be tried in an international tribunal for their crimes against humanity.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
January 18, 2006