Commentary by U.S. Alliance for Democratic Iran
In another blow to the policy of appeasement toward the terror-sponsoring regime of ayatollahs, the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission (POAC/MEK) today upheld its November 30 ruling which ordered the removal of Iran’s main opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin from the list of terror organizations. POAC struck down the appeal by the United Kingdom’s government which is unwisely trying to preserve a despicable legacy of former British Foreign Minister Jack Straw.
POAC ruling follows a similar judgment last year by the European Union’s second highest court which overturned the European Union decision to put the PMOI on the EU’s terror blacklist. The ruling annulled the EU’s decision to freeze European assets of the group.
In October 1997, U.S. Department of State included the PMOI in the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) as part of a policy of rapprochement with the Iranian regime and “as a good-will gesture”; a move which Khatami’s government "considered it a pretty big deal." Senior diplomats in the Clinton administration have acknowledged that the PMOI “figured prominently as a bargaining chip in a bridge-building effort with Tehran.”
The UK ruling comes as the hurried and hasty jubilance of Tehran appeasers in Washington following last week’s release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program is dying down and a more sober assessment of the NIE and its policy implications is gradually emerging.
Now that the pre-NIE hype over immanent military attack on Iran’s nuclear sites has evaporated and it is now universally agreed that this option is not plausible anymore – not that it ever really was – and given the utter bankruptcy of let’s-talk-to-ayatollahs-to-fix-every thing, the time has come for bold, realistic, and out of the box (of military option vs. appeasement) thinking and policy making.
The fact that the irreformable theocratic nature of Iran’s ruling regime is the root of the Tehran’s conduct should be a starting point for any new thinking. Desire of Iranian people for democratic change – again on display this week by thousands of students chanting “death to dictator’, and “down with the corrupt and lawless government” – must be heeded and supported.
It is in this context that removing all roadblocks and restrictions from Iran’s democratic opposition forces becomes a prerequisite for realization of democratic change in Iran. Better programming at Voice of America and Radio Farda is all good but it is not democracy movement’s main handicap. Nor is lack of cell phones or laptops. But the putting the brakes on the the most potent and effective opposition movement, the PMOI, by way of blacklisting them, is. And in light of ample legal, political and policy grounds for reversing the blacklisting of the PMOI, the administration should reassess its evaluation of the group and lift the terror designation. Let the ball for democratic change in Iran rolling. (USADI)