The Iranian regime represents a threat not only to the Iranian people, but also to the rest of the civilised world. For many years it has been directly involved in planning, financing and executing terrorist atrocities across the world. It has been aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, which should frighten all of us.
When we consider that we are talking about a medieval theocracy, which supports and lauds suicide bombers, having the ability to discharge nuclear weapons that fear becomes real.
The regime has also set up, we must remember, insurgent groups in Iraq with the aim of conducting fatal attacks on Coalition forces. It has supplied those insurgents with funding and the smart bombs, which either pierce through the armour plating of our coalition vehicles or are detonated through infrared technology. We also know that through infiltration of the Iraqi police and security services, they and their proxies, such as the Badr Brigade, have been responsible for many hundreds of assassinations of Iraqi dissidents and of course the most recent news is that they have been running secret torture centres with the Iraqi Interior Ministry. This is a list of concerns which almost beggars belief. But the truth is, not enough people know of it and not enough people understand the threat that is being presented.
The aim in Iraq of the mullahs regime is to take control of Iraq and set up a satellite Islamic fundamentalist state which will create a Middle East even more dangerous than we have known today.
The truth of the matter is that we hoped in the West, that things would get better. Some hoped that our policy of appeasement would bear fruit. We are talking about a regime which by any sets of codes that most of us would hold dear to, would be considered to be evil. Sadly, that regime has deepened with respect to its evil nature since the election of Ahmadinejad. Now surely, our government must now act.
Iran’s new President and his terrorist cabinet are the people who state publicly that Israel should be wiped off the world map. What a frightening remark, to present to the people of the West who fought against a similarly evil regime in 1939 & 1946. Because I am quite frank and do equate that remark with that kind of evil and I think it is time and it is the moment to tell the people that this sort of evil exists again in our world and it is the duty of all good and fair minded people to fight against it.
I am delighted, I must say when I heard the Prime Minister saying “Can you imagine a regime such as this possessing nuclear weapons?” Maybe, hopefully, maybe that is the start of a change of attitude and thinking within the British government which will infiltrate the American government and we will begin to see the changes that we all call for.
What shocks and angers me, is the way in which our government and the EU have bowed to most of the mullahs demands. May the Foreign Office explain to the public why they still have not changed their policy towards a regime that is responsible for the deaths of British troops in Iraq and whose Basij forces throw petrol bombs at our Embassy in Tehran, whilst chanting that if the Iranian regime’s nuclear file is referred to the United Nations Security Council, no corner of Britain will be safe from suicide bombers. Don’t we deserve an explanation as to why we still pursue an appeasement policy when we hear words of that kind? Certainly it frightens me. It frightens me for my children and for my grandchildren. I believe that message ought to get through to our government and I am hopeful having visited with Lord Corbett and Lord Russell-Johnston the EU commission in Brussels over three weeks ago. I am hopeful that there is beginning to be a realisation of the failure of the appeasement policy and beginning to hope there might just be a change in policy in this respect.
It’s about time that our Foreign Secretary accepted just how unsuccessful and indeed dangerous our policy towards the mullahs has been. The result of appeasement has been to place the most radical elements of the Iranian regime in power, which in turn has resulted in a shocking increase in the level and brutality of oppression in Iran. We have learnt of the stepping up of the mullahs’ involvement in terrorism and interference in Iraq, and of course the mullahs becoming ever closer to achieving their nuclear ambitions, ought to be enough to make us realise that the threat is not only to the Middle East, not only to the Iranian people, but if Shihab is finally developed in two years time as they think it will be, we are talking about a threat to the coastline of France and maybe here. That needs to be taken into account by our Foreign Minister.
One of the most concerning acts of appeasement undertaken by the EU and the West in general concerns our agreement to the demands of the mullahs to place Iran’s main opposition, the Iranian Mojahedin, on the list of terrorist organisations. That is a sell out. The Iranian people know it’s a sell out. Many of those Iranians in exile, many, many thousands and millions know it’s a sell out. And yet we are still trying to find our way around a policy which has proved to be so unsuccessful.
The truth of the matter is, the Iranian people’s only hope of freedom and democracy, the PMOI, have been the sacrificial lamb to deals done to placate their oppressors, it is an act for which I fear the Iranian people will find difficult to understand on behalf of our governments. By unjustly proscribing the PMOI and by placing restrictions on its activities, we have sent a message to the Iranian people that we are taking, almost taking active steps to support the regime now in power. What sort of message is that for a democracy to give to an oppressed people? What sort of hope does that engender in their breasts that there might be a change for the good, when the West still aids in that respect a regime that we all find impossible to support and we all believe is remarkable to even exist in the 21st century.
How does the government square and justify the presence of the PMOI on the proscribed list with the fact that the PMOI have not conducted any military activities over recent years, that their personnel in Iraq have voluntarily disarmed, and following thorough a 16-month investigation by the Multi National Forces in Iraq into the PMOI and its personnel in Iraq, they were granted ‘protected persons’ status and found to have no links to terrorism. How do we square that with the fact that we support the PMOI on the proscribed list? Its nonsense.
So we really have to impress on our government in every way possible, the fact that by taking the PMOI off the proscribed list, we send a message of hope to the people of Iran and we give some hope to the Council for Resistance in Iran that there is a future for a democratic and free Iran in the Middle East which can play a positive role in that region which has been one of the most frightening that the world has seen in our generation and in generations before.
