Former vice president of the European Parliament Alejo Vidal-Quadras participated in the latest of an ongoing series of question-and-answer sessions hosted by the website IranFreedom.org.
Alejo-Quadras currently who serves as the President of the International Committee in Search of Justice (ISJ), a Brussels-based non-governmental organization focused on promoting human rights and democracy in Iran, especially through support of the political opposition to the clerical regime.
In Tuesday’s questions-and-answer session, the former MEP described the ISJ’s views as including the belief that the vast majority of instability across the Middle East stems from the Iranian regime’s meddling in the region.
In responding to questions from journalists in the Middle East and elsewhere, Alejo-Quadras said on Tuesday that “the Iranian regime will never change its goals and final objectives,” which include the creation of a hegemony not only in the Middle East but across whatever Tehran considers to be the Muslim world.
Drawing on the conclusions of an ISJ report that was released in November 2014 and outlined Iran’s concealment of its military nuclear program, Vidal-Quadras said of the Iranian regime, “They never comply with agreements, they never respect agreements, and they always go on with hidden or secret activities.”
Based partly on this observation, Vidal-Quadras, who also possesses a background in radiation physics, expressed a strong preference for a nuclear agreement that halts Iran’s nuclear enrichment altogether – something that is not on the table for any agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations.
Tehran has clearly rejected any such high demands for compliance, as well as declaring that international inspectors would have no access to Iran’s military sites and that economic sanctions must be removed immediately upon the signing of a deal. All of this further contributes to the anxieties of those who oppose a deal that Vidal-Quadras believes will only move Iran’s breakout time back by a period of a few months.
Vidal-Quadras told the viewers of his online talk that it is also time for Western democracies to seriously consider supporting and collaborating with the democratic political opposition, in particular the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) that ultimately seeks regime change from with the nation of Iran.