By: Major General Paul Vallely
Source: International Analyst Network
Co-authored by: Lt. Gen. McInerney (USAF, Ret.), Chair, Iran Policy Committee Advisory Council; Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, (USA, Ret.), Chair, Stand Up America and IPC; Professor Raymond Tanter, President, IPC and former member of the NSC staff
Congratulations to the Bush administration on its October 2007 decision to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.
We concur in the designation for proliferation activities IRGC-affiliated entities and individuals as derivatives of the IRGC, the Iranian regime’s state-owned Banks Melli and Mellat, and individuals affiliated with Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization. We were delighted with the designation of the Qods Force of the IRGC for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, and Iran’s state-owned Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier.
The designations exploit the Achilles Heel of the Iranian regimeââ¬âits vulnerability to sanctions that inhibit Tehran’s quest for the bomb and its use of proxies to conduct terrorist activities.
We congratulate the administration for going beyond two UN resolutions with designations that have more wide-ranging implications: Building international consensus against the Iranian regime will not cause us to sit still as the regime uses its entities to acquire western technology for uranium enrichment and promotes international terrorism with front groups.
We applaud the October 2007 remarks of Vice President Cheney, “The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences…We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Even if some of EU states join in implementing tougher sanctions because the UN is unwilling to adopt a third resolution, diplomacy is running more slowly than progress the Iranian regime is making on enrichment technology and exporting its terrorism. The military option should remain on the table; but there is a third option yet to be effectively pursued, which would reinforce stalled diplomacy and make military action less necessary: empowering the Iranian people.
As the President acknowledged, it is because of Iranian opposition groups that we know about the regime’s covert uranium enrichment activities. The group the President spoke of is the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the parliament in exile whose revelations exposed the regime’s race for the bomb. Because the EU considers this parliament to be a legal opposition group, it is able to operate in Europe, but not in the United States. Its units pose the only credible threat to the clerics’ hold on power, without use of American force to bring about regime change, which is something the Iranian people can do for themselves.
The largest unit within the Iranian parliament in exile is the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which revealed the smuggling of sophisticated roadside bomb technology into Iraq that results in the killing of American soldiers. A study of regime statements by our Iran Policy Committee finds that Tehran pays attention to the MEK 350% more than all other groups combined and dislikes it more than all other opposition groups.
A 16-month review by the United States in July 2004 found no basis to charge members of the MEK in Iraq with violations of American laws, though the group is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Interviews by officials from State and FBI did not produce any basis to indict MEK members.
In July 2004, General Geoffrey Miller, then deputy commander in Iraq, announced MEK members as protected persons by the United States, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, providing them new rights. And our second in command in Iraq, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, spoke favorably about the MEK and suggested there should be a review of the group’s terrorist designation because of its cooperation with the Multi-National Force-Iraq, when he headed the Fourth Infantry Division.
In August 2003, under pressure from Tehran, the State Department shut down the offices of the National Council for Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US) in Washington. But the Iranian regime stepped up support for the Shiite militia of Moqtada al Sadr. The deadliest roadside explosives were then produced in Iran and sent across the border to kill Americans.
These two pro-democracy Iranian opposition groups are working at half-throttle: They are unjustifiably designated as terrorist organizations in the United States, contrary to research of the Iran Policy Committee and policies of our European allies.
Designation of Tehran’s units for proliferation and terrorist activities is resulting in a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East. The designations suggest the United States is taking a firm stance, our allies should do more to counter the threat from the Iranian regime, and that empowerment of the Iranian people for democratic change is a next transatlantic step to combat the threat posed by Tehran.
