Following the ascension of a terrorist hostage taker and Revolutionary Guards commander, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new president in Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, warned that this development would bring nothing but escalating suppression at home, increasing export of terrorism and fundamentalism in particular to Iraq and stepped-up efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
I emphasized in my previous commentaries that with the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards Corps had emerged as the pillar of the clerical regime. This is the body responsible for suppression, export of terrorism and nuclear weapons procurement. Supreme National Security Council Secretary, Brig. Gen. Ali Larijani; State Radio and Television Chief Brig. Gen. Ezzatollah Zarghami; State Exigency Council Secretary Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezai; State Security Forces Commander, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moqadam and a large number of parliament deputies, many other government officials and finally the mullahs’ new president are former members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Several other IRGC commanders are slated to fill Ahmadinejad’s cabinet.
The increase in number of public hangings and brutal punishments in recent days are a clear indication of what to expect as far as human rights are concerned. The state-run media reported seven hangings and six death sentences in only three days this week.
The appointment of a Revolutionary Guard commander as the nuclear point man in the talks with the European Union, the blatant breach of the Paris Accord by starting up Isfahan’s uranium conversion facility and the rejection of IAEA’s August 11 resolution, shed light on the Iranian regime’s resolve to acquire nuclear weapons.
But the most dangerous threat that has received little attention is Tehran’s creeping meddling in Iraq and its plans to devour that country. Today, there is irrefutable evidence that Iran’s money, weapons and agents are fanning the flames of the insurgency, terrorism and kidnapping in Iraq.
Two members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) were kidnapped by agents of the clerical regime in Baghdad on August 4. Hossein Pouyan (with political refugee status in Italy) and Mohammad-Ali Zahedi were both recognized as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. This criminal act follows the acknowledgement by high ranking Iraqi government officials during a visit to Iran that PMOI was a dissident political entity in Iraq.
The mullahs decided to set aside all political and diplomatic considerations and resort to this kind of terrorism against the PMOI after the Coalition’s bombing of the organization’s camps in Iraq failed to destroy it and Tehran’s expensive and extensive misinformation campaign did not bring the desired expulsion of the PMOI to Iran.
This new development has to be seen in the context of a political and strategic turning point within the Iranian regime. Faced with internal and external crises and unable to counter widespread popular resistance, the regime needed to resort to greater brutality in order to ensure its permanence.
The other aspect of this new turning point is the regime’s increased meddling in Iraq, manifested in the dispatch of large quantities of arms and ammunition, a growing number of Revolutionary Guards and clerics and more money to that country to establish a puppet Islamic Republic. In addition, Iran has not hidden its ambitious agenda in the Shiite-dominated southern regions of Iraq. In short, this is a declaration of war by Tehran.
Recent remarks by the U.S. and British authorities on mullahs’ meddling in Iraq shed light on a limited aspect of the reality in that country. The clerics’ increasing role in terrorist operations in Iraq and its efforts to spread its fundamentalist doctrine in Iraq are far greater than what has been exposed so far.
Unfortunately, the danger and threat Iran poses to Iraq have been minimized and kept out of political radar. It appears as if the way to resolve the crisis in Iraq is to co-opt the Iranian regime. This would have been an appropriate strategy were the Iranian regime not part of the problem but part of the solution in Iraq.
No country benefits from the crisis in Iraq more than the Iranian regime. All neighboring countries would feel strategically threatened by a theocracy in Iraq. The Iranian mullahs are not only the only exception, but have the greatest strategic interest in the installation of such a regime. Iran has the longest border with some 80 percent of the Iraq’s population centers within one hundred miles of the Iranian border. No country in the region has a military force as large as the Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Qods (Jerusalem) Force. And no country in the region comes remotely close to investing as much as the mullahs have in exporting fundamentalism to that nation.
The reason for Iranian meddling: A democratic Iraq would pose no danger to any country other than the totalitarian regime in Iran. As long as the clerical regime remains in power in Iran it will use all its resources to prevent the establishment of democracy, peace and tranquility in Iraq. The mullahs are determined to set up a puppet Islamic state in Iraq or in some regions of the country even if it were to lead to a civil war or the disintegration of Iraq as a sovereign country. That would be the spring board for mullahs as they try to realize their ominous dream of a global Islamic rule. Such a development would pose an even greater threat to peace and tranquility in the region and the world, than Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons would.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of ruling clerics in Iran would be used to disrupt the regional balance of power. Only the spread of fundamentalism could guarantee the mullahs’ long-term survival and forestall the inevitable downfall of this regime, which is incompatible with anything and everything that the civilized world stands for.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee