Source: Guardian
The People’s Mojahedin Organisation (PMOI/MEK) is ‘not concerned with terrorism’, according to a UK court. So, we should take it off the blacklist
Good news came earlier this month, when the UN security council adopted a third sanctions resolution against the Iranian regime over its illegal nuclear weapons activity. Resolution 1803, which includes an outright ban on travel by officials involved in Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes, gives the autocratic rulers three months to comply with the demands of the UN nuclear watchdog to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing or face new sanctions.
The resolution also calls for inspections of shipments to and from Iran if there are suspicions of prohibited goods and urges states to “exercise vigilance” in entering into new commitments for publicly funded financial support for trade with Iran, including the granting of export credits.
But even as the resolution was being adopted by 14-0 with only one abstention – Indonesia – the regime’s officials vowed that, regardless of however many resolutions were adopted at the UN, the Islamic Republic would never halt its uranium enrichment activities.
Tehran’s belligerent attitude stems from the west’s half-hearted policy of countering its unlawful activities. Despite its vociferous posture against the regime at the UN, the west is in fact assisting the regime on another front. In particular, Britain is spearheading an effort to crack down on the only effective opposition movement in an effort to win concessions from Tehran.
Looking at the Iran conundrum in perspective, Iran is the world’s fourth largest oil producer and has the world’s second largest gas reserves. So economic sanctions on their own are hardly going to have an effect on a regime which has become an international pariah state.
The theocratic regime’s weak point is its lack of popular support. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, students and women were responsible for a major portion of the more than 5,000 anti-government protests that were held in Iran last year alone.
If the international community lends support to the Iranian people and their resistance movement, this would undoubtedly force the regime to think twice before unilaterally pressing on with its clandestine nuclear projects and meddling in the affairs of regional states. It would also encourage the population to come out in greater numbers against the regime which is becoming increasingly isolated on the international scene.
Currently, Iran’s rulers are carrying out their most ferocious crackdown on young people – especially women – in recent years. In January alone, the regime executed at least 23 prisoners, murdered a dissident student in the north-western city of Sanandaj, executed another wounded prisoner lying on a stretcher in the northern city of Khoy, amputated the limbs of five prisoners in the south-eastern city of Zahedan, and sentenced two teenagers to be thrown off a cliff in a sack in the southern city of Shiraz, a city famous for its poets, jasmine, and rose gardens.
Remarkably, at a time when we should be isolating the regime for its sponsorship of terror at home and abroad, the UK government is hampering the efforts of the Iranian opposition to bring about change in Iran.
Since 2001, it has banned the main democratic Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) at the behest of Tehran’s rulers. In 2002, it encouraged the EU to ban the group as well.
When in December 2006, the European court of first instance ordered the EU to lift the ban on the PMOI, it was the UK government that pressured the EU council of ministers to ignore the court ruling and maintain the ban.
Worse still, when on November 30 2007, the UK high court’s Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) ruled unequivocally that the PMOI is “not concerned in terrorism” and ordered the Home Secretary to lift the “flawed” and “perverse” ban, the government simply ignored the ruling in order to further appease a regime which has executed over 120,000 members of the PMOI and continues to employ more than 174 forms of torture in its notorious prisons.
It is clear that as long as Britain and the EU continue to stifle the very force working tirelessly to end the mullahs’ despotic rule, the regime would feel secure enough to brazenly ignore however many security council ultimatums it receives.
The UK’s court of appeals is set to issue its judgment in the coming weeks on whether the government would be allowed to appeal the POAC ruling. With no evidence to show that the PMOI is a terrorist organisation, the government’s likelihood of winning a motion to appeal are looking ever more bleak.
Whitehall should now do the right thing by lifting the ban on the PMOI and allowing the Iranian people and their resistance to bring about democratic change in Iran. Such action, coupled with comprehensive sanctions against the regime at the UN, would be an appropriate response and pave the way for fundamental change in Iran.