The Scotsman, July 27 – Battles and battle lines are rarely, if ever, simple in the Middle East. All its current problems have one common feature – Iran. Tehran’s mullahs have spread their evil influence in all areas, directly and indirectly.
A year ago, Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian opposition leader, told the European parliament that by propelling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had declared war on his own people and on the world community. Events have proved her right. While the deadly war in Lebanon has taken centre stage, Tehran’s strategic battleground is Iraq. The ruling ayatollahs’ appetite for establishing a proxy regime in Iraq, with the world’s second largest oil reserves and a majority Shiite population, is no secret. Tehran has spent billions of dollars in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein and sent thousands of intelligence agents and revolutionary guards to aid the insurgency. Iranian agents have infiltrated Iraqi security organs.
The Qods (Jerusalem) Force is the extra-territorial arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps tasked with implementing the mullahs’ plans in Iraq. Basra residents say members of the Iranian intelligence service operate openly. US military sources say Iran has been the main source of explosive devices that have taken a heavy toll on coalition forces. Tehran finances and organises terror groups that target intellectuals and anti-fundamentalist figures.
As part of their strategy, the mullahs have launched an unrelenting campaign against the presence of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), the principal Iranian opposition movement, in Ashraf City in Iraq, where thousands of anti-fundamentalist Iranian opponents of the mullahs espouse a tolerant, democratic Islam, the antithesis of the ayatollahs’ extremist Islam. These political exiles have been in Iraq for 20 years, with protected persons status under the Fourth Geneva convention since 2004.
When it was announced earlier this year that 5.2 million Iraqis (Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds) had signed a petition protesting against Iranian involvement in Iraq and declaring support for the PMOI, Tehran’s campaign against its arch enemy took on a sinister new dimension. The mullahs became so irate they urged the Iraqi government to expel the PMOI from Camp Ashraf. On 29 May, a bus carrying Iraqi citizens working in the camp was blown up, resulting in 11 deaths. Last week, agents of Iran twice blew up the water supply from the Tigris to Camp Ashraf.
The Middle East problem is complex and has to be addressed accordingly. But the main battleground is Iraq and this is where the West should confront the mullahs. Focus anywhere else and we will fall into the trap that Tehran has set for us.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, should have no illusions. Tehran is neither a friend of Iraq nor an ally of the West. It is simply a group of medieval, fascist power-mongers wreaking havoc in the Middle East.
Mr Maliki should be vigilant to the ploys and pressures of the evil Iranian regime. It would be a grave and strategic mistake by the new Iraqi government to kowtow to Tehran.
Struan Stevenson is a Conservative MEP for Scotland and co-president of the Friends of a free Iran Intergroup.