By: Shahab Sariri
Source: Global Politician, August 22, 2007
Iranian cities have been the scene of widespread protests and clashes between a restive population and the Iranian regime’s State Security Forces (SSF). Students from Tehran’s Amir Kabir otherwise known as Polytechnic University, where Ahmadinejad’s pictures were burned earlier this year, have been staging sit-ins demanding the release of political prisoners. Across the country, other universities have followed suit and clashes with SSF have been widely reported. Over the past few months, teachers, laborers, and feminists have also staged their own protests, strikes, and sit-ins. The people of Iran have shaken the foundations of the mullah’s regime, risking there lives to make one thing clear: that they want democratic change and the end to the mullah’s regime.
Why now?
For nearly three decades the West has relentlessly pursued a policy of appeasement in a failed attempt to deal with the mullahs in Iran in exchange for lucrative yet short sighted economic interests. Today, due to the regime’s nuclear program and its extensive meddling in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Afghanistan, there are signs that the world community is in the process of implementing a new policy towards the Iranian regime. To date, two resolutions have been passed by the United Nations Security Council, imposing sanctions on Iran’s mullahs. In Iraq, coalition forces have been actively working to counter the regime’s efforts to establish a sister theocracy based on Khomeini’s model.
These new measures have had positive repercussions in the Iranian streets.
In response to its internal crisis, the regime has stepped up public executions, arbitrary arrests, and increased its terrorist activities abroad in a hallow show of strength. Emboldened by international pressure however, the people of Iran have been unrelenting in their pursuit for democratic change. The shift in policy adopted in recent months aimed at countering the Iranian threat both at the U.N and in Iraq have been instrumental in encouraging the people of Iran. These overdue measures have proven that neither war nor appeasement is the answer in dealing with the mullahs in Tehran.
One reviewing the mainstream media is led to believe that there are only the two options in countering the Iranian threat. A third option, which entails reaching out to Iran’s organized democratic opposition as the catalyst for change, is neither politically expedient nor costly (as apposed to appeasement or war respectively) but offers the only effective and viable approach. The potential for bringing about a change in government resides with the Iranian people, indeed. Commenting on prior anti-government protests, a Tehran-based European diplomat explained, “The pent-up anger is still there, beneath the surface. But for it to seriously take off you need a catalyst, you need a cause, you need organization and leadership. It’s a big task,” he said. Such potential needs to be legitimized and mobilized.
Support for Iran’s largest, most organized, secular, and democratic opposition, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi is instrumental in solving the Iran riddle. Last June, recognizing the value of Iranian resistance to their own security, 5.2 million Iraqi’s signed a declaration recognizing the MEK as the only barrier between them and the fundamentalists dispatched by Tehran. The MEK has proved its deep roots within Iranian society. It has exposed the regime’s terrorist networks in Iraq and around the world as well as details of the regime’s nuclear program. The MEK’s ability to mobilize and organize the masses has never been truthfully questioned.
Unfortunately, today the MEK sits on the State Department and EU’s list of foreign terrorist organizations due to outdated and failed appeasement policies. Martin Indyk, Assistant Secretary of State of Near Eastern Affairs at the time the MEK was blacklisted, told Newsweek on September 26, 2002, “… [There] was White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government. At the time, President Khatami had recently been elected and was seen as a moderate. Top Administration officials saw cracking down on the MEK, which the Iranians had made clear they saw as a menace, as one way to do so.” The terror label against the MEK serves as a life line to the mullahs in Iran. In Europe, the EU Council of Ministers have chosen to flagrantly ignore the rule of law by refusing to remove the MEK from its terror list, as they were bound to do after a December 2006 ruling by the European Court of Justice annulling the EU’s decision to blacklist the organization.
History is our greatest teacher. Appeasement of expansionist regimes serves only as a precursor to wide-scale conflicts. The listing of the MEK as a terrorist group by the EU and the State Department is nothing more than a dangerous act of appeasement. Such policies fail to pacify a rouge regime which is hell bent on spreading its fundamentalist revolution throughout the Middle East.
Shahab Sariri is the Vice-President of the National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates (ncpdaus.org). NCPDAUS organizes panel discussions, symposiums, briefings, and conferences in Congress in support of democratic change in Iran.
