Berlin / Vienna, March 9, 2015 (APA) – While the United States stated reported progress in nuclear negotiations with Iran according to President Barack Obama, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent a five-member team of experts to Tehran to negotiate over the technical details of Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian exile opposition warns the West against “illusions”.
This was said by a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on Monday to APA. Last weekend a “convention” of the Iranian exile opposition in the German capital Berlin sounded the alarm. In a nutshell: settlement with Iran’s dictatorship than yielding to the epicenter of fundamentalism and a sponsor of terrorism, criticism of the weakness of Western governments and sharp warnings against giving in to the mullahs in the nuclear negotiations.
This was not just a gathering of the exile opposition in Europe but it was a gathering on roots and dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and the West’s inability to deal with it. Not only Maryam Rajavi, the Paris based President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, but also many former European politicians and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuilani were cheered in Berlin Velodrome by tens of thousands of participants for their criticism of Tehran and illusions of the West.
The former foreign policy advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Horst Teltschik, criticized the current Federal government, especially Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière for its refusal to bring another 150 people from the “Camp Liberty” to Germany. The camp is home to around 2,500 Iranian opponents in Iraq who are target of violence and there are efforts to annihilate them. “It’s ludicrous to see these people a threat to internal security in Germany,” Teltschik said. Even the United States has called on to take people from the camp: “It’s about time!”
The Iranian regime currently sees the chance to become a regional power in the Middle East. That is why Teltschik, former head of the Munich Security Conference, said with doubt whether the regime permanently would renounce the development of nuclear weapons. “They probably already have the technology to produce nuclear weapons. The mullahs have acquired the prerequisites long ago.” However, a military solution is not a right solution. This could become a nightmare for the entire Middle East and Near East.
Also, the former EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen warned the West against illusions and self-deception, if one can make reliable agreements with the mullahs: “There is no long-term partnership with them, and the human rights violations must be denounced every day!” Verheugen criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Federal President Joachim Gauck, “that you did not welcome this remarkable woman, Maryam Rajavi.”
Rajavi as the keynote speaker, referred to the ruling religious dictatorship in Tehran as the heart of the problem of fundamentalism in the region. “Iran’s support for Bashar Assad’s dictatorship in Syria, Maliki in Iraq and other countries led to the emergence of fundamentalist militias and the IS.” Stoning, eye-gouging, amputation of limbs in the criminal law, massacre of political prisoners, record number of torture and executions, including women and young people: “The regime is the godfather of terrorism and the biggest threat to the world peace.”
Rajavi criticized the Western appeasement and the confusion in dealing with IS and extremism in the name of Islam. She warned strongly against offering concessions to the Iranian regime in the nuclear negotiations. The silence of the West over the current inhuman crimes, only in order not to burden the nuclear negotiations, encourages the mullahs to continue their atrocities and their atomic bomb project. “The mullahs have come from a situation of despair to the negotiating table, but the policy of appeasement has again encouraged them. Such weak policy strengthens fundamentalism.”
The NCRI was established in 1981, two years after the Revolution by Ayatollah Khomeini. Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian opposition in exile and its President elect, advocates a democratic republic based on a strict separation of state and religion, pluralism and equality between men and women.