Not content with bombing six oil tankers in the Gulf and the shooting down of an American drone, the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ‘s Javad smiles for cameras, while regime tortures dissidents
My article in https://t.co/YtD5p0VouZ
— STRUAN (@STRUANSTEVENSON) August 7, 2019
“During their time in office, Zarif and his friend, the so-called ‘moderate’ President Hassan Rouhani, have presided over the execution of more than 3,500 people, including women and children in Iran, where the torturers and executioners are busier than ever, determined to crush all opposition under a tidal wave of fear and oppression.”
“The mullahs have even accelerated their wave of hostage-taking, extending the arrest of dual Iranian-foreign nationals like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, to foreign citizens. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the young British-Iranian mother, has been held in appalling conditions in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for more than three years on trumped-up espionage charges. She has now been joined by Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a young Australian academic, who was arrested in October 2018 by the IRGC and by Australian travel bloggers Mark Firkin and Jolie King, who were arrested in July.”
It is believed that at least 30 dual and foreign nationals are imprisoned in Iran, Mr. Stevenson added. Their arrests are always followed by a pattern of prolonged solitary confinement and interrogation, against a background of denial of due process, denial of consular access or visits from U.N. or humanitarian organizations, secretive trials in which the detainee is given limited access to counsel and long prison sentences based on vague or unspecified “national security” and “espionage” charges.
“The belligerent and hostile behavior of the Iranian regime proves that attempts at negotiation or appeasement are pointless. Claims that the West is faced only with the choice between war and appeasement is a false dichotomy. Making concessions to this evil regime simply emboldens them and confirms the mullah’s view that the West is weak.”
“We do not seek war, but we do seek courage and resilience, not weakness. We must show our support for the Iranian people and their democratic resistance movement, the Mojahedin e-Khalq/People’s Mojahedin of Iran (MEK/PMOI). Their courageous determination to remove this evil regime from power and replace it with a secular democracy is the only way forward,” Mr. Stevenson summarized.
Struan Stevenson is the coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change. He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an international lecturer on the Middle East and president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association.