“Our committee does not envisage foreign military action against Iran as a feasible solution to the current nuclear crisis or the regime’s meddling in Iraq. Neither do we feel that the status quo of appeasing the regime …will convince the regime to abandon its illegal activities." the group said in a statement.
“We subscribe to the very viable ‘Third Option’ presented by the President elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, who has urged the international community to support democratic change in Iran domestically by the Iranian people and their Resistance. This democratic solution to the Iranian problem is the only practical way of preventing a crisis in Iran and the region,” the Parliamentarians added.
The text of statement by the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom:
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom
EU should blacklist Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
U.S. sanctions on Qods Force, Iran military “contributes significantly” to fight against terrorism
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, a cross-party group of Parliamentarians from both Houses of Parliament, on Wednesday urged the European Union to blacklist the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The group also called on the EU to lift restrictions from the main Iranian opposition movement, the PMOI.
In a letter to Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates, who currently holds the EU’s rotating Presidency, the cross-party Parliamentarians said: “The IRGC, which gets its orders directly from the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is in charge of much of the regime’s production of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including the A-bomb. It has also been involved in planning and executing more than 100 terrorist operations against foreign nationals and Iranian dissidents in virtually every continent of the world over the past 27 years. Of course, this figure significantly excludes the regime’s daily terrorist activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The group lauded the decision by the Bush administration to ban the IRGC and accuse its elite Qods Force of “supporting terrorism”, describing it as a “great stride in the war against terrorism.”
“The IRGC has also played a major role in suppressing dissent among an increasingly disenchanted population at home. It is responsible for carrying out the executions of 120,000 members and sympathisers of the main Iranian opposition force, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), 30,000 of whom were executed in the 1988 massacre of political prisoners. It has also participated in the torture of well over half a million political prisoners over the past two decades. The regime in Iran makes use of more than 174 forms of physical and psychological torture”, the letter said.
It added the IRGC controls a large portion of Iran’s economy. “We have determined that since 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has appointed several hundred Revolutionary Guards commanders to senior Government positions including the recent instatment of Saeed Jalili as Tehran’s new nuclear negotiator,” it said.
The U.S. decision to impose sanctions against the IRGC and the Iranian Ministry of Defence will “contribute greatly” to slashing funding for the “world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism”. “Our committee believes that for sanctions to have a meaningful effect, they must be multilateral. It therefore feels that it is in the interest of world peace and stability and an asset to the fight against terrorism for the European Union and in particular the United Kingdom to follow suit”, the Parliamentarians said.
“We urge EU governments to impose sanctions on the IRGC and issue a ban on this institution of terror so as not to give the regime more time to build a nuclear bomb and pursue its ominous projects in the Middle East.
“Our committee does not envisage foreign military action against Iran as a feasible solution to the current nuclear crisis or the regime’s meddling in Iraq. Neither do we feel that the status quo of appeasing the regime and giving it concession after concession as well as holding perpetual rounds of dialogue with the mullahs’ representatives will convince the regime to abandon its illegal activities.
“We subscribe to the very viable ‘Third Option’ presented by the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, who has urged the international community to support democratic change in Iran domestically by the Iranian people and their Resistance. This democratic solution to the Iranian problem is the only practical way of preventing a crisis in Iran and the region,” the Parliamentarians added.
The group urged the EU and in particular the UK to adhere to the December 2006 ruling of the European Court of Justice by lifting restrictions from the PMOI. “This would demonstrate Europe’s commitment to democracy and institutions of law and send a powerful impact to Tehran that the international community will not sit idly by as it seeks to acquire a nuclear bomb and dominate Iraq and the Middle East.”
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom
1 November 2007
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Note to editors:
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom is comprised of over 50 Members of Parliament and Peers from across the political spectrum. It has the backing of the majority of MPs and more than 200 Peers in its endeavours for human rights and democracy in Iran.
The PMOI – Iran’s principal opposition force – is a member organisation in the main opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran. Some 120,000 of its members and sympathisers have been executed by the mullahs’ regime on political grounds. The NCRI was the first to alert the international community to the regime’s secret nuclear projects in August 2002.The PMOI were proscribed in the UK by then‐Home Secretary Jack Straw MP in 2001. The same proscription was used as the basis of the group’s inclusion in the EU’s terrorist list. On 12 December 2006, however, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities in a landmark verdict “annulled” the EU’s decision to place the group in the terrorist list. At the UK Government’s bidding, the EU announced in June 2007 that it would maintain the PMOI in the list.
The Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission (POAC) is currently reviewing the PMOI’s proscription in the UK and is expected to announce its verdict in the coming weeks.