For the past three weeks, tens of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets in Iran once again, demanding democracy and an end to the regime. Popular protests continue to haunt the fundamentalist rulers at a critical time in the region's history. But without offering support to the Iranian people and their main opposition, this critical window of opportunity will be closed, and it will be much harder and too late to deal with the Iranian regime's threat.
For the West, the expression of legitimate demands for freedoms and human rights across the Middle East has meant that the era of choosing tyrannical stability over democracy as a matter of foreign policy has ended.
To alleviate concerns about the role of religious fundamentalism in the region's future, Washington should stop talking to the fundamentalist mullahs and start listening to the Iranian people.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have offered encouragement to the protestors. But, if not translated into tangible actions, words and concerns are simply benign.
Washington should stay ahead of the curve in the Middle East and update its policies faster. The Iranian regime's nuclear intransigence, suppression at home and terrorist support abroad are outracing US policy.
Appeasement or threat of war are not the only options on Iran. There is a third alternative: supporting democratic change by the Iranian people and their resistance movement.
Since June 2009, the Iranian people's uprisings have clearly targeted the whole regime and its highest authority, so-called Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. During the recent demonstrations, protestors chanted, "Mubarak, Bin Ali, now it is the turn of Seyyed Ali."
The depth and magnitude of the protests on the streets, coupled with the deepening fissures at the apex of power within the regime, present new dynamics, no longer deserving to be overlooked.
By taking a tougher stance against the regime and supporting democratic change, the US will not only welcome the imminent democratic change in Iran, it will also muffle the preventable growth of fundamentalism in the region.
As Egyptians protested in early February, Khamenei urged the establishment of an Islamic regime in Cairo, while celebrating an "Islamic awakening" modeled after his own tyrannical regime.
For the West, it makes absolutely no sense to expect a democratic outcome for the popular discontent in the Middle East while at the same time engaging the fundamentalists in Iran.
The third option of democratic change should no longer be the third rail of America's Iran policy. It should be the first priority.
There are a number of practical steps that need to be taken to that end.
First, more comprehensive sanctions, especially an oil embargo, should be imposed against the regime, depriving it of the means to fund terrorism and extremism abroad.
Second, in contrast to its tepid reaction to the regime's crackdown in 2009, the US must stand tough against rights abuses, by taking the regime's case to the UN Security Council, for example, in pursuit of more punitive measures. In January alone, the mullahs executed close to 100 people, a 400 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
And last but certainly not least, even in the current environment, the US is curtailing the activities of the principal Iranian opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), by keeping it on the blacklist at the behest of Tehran.
A number of distinguished former high-ranking officials from the past three administrations, including not one but three former joint chiefs of staff, seasoned US diplomats, counterterrorism experts and veteran security and intelligence officials like former CIA and FBI directors have called on Washington to delist the MEK and protect Camp Ashraf, home to 3,400 MEK members in Iraq.
The US must immediately delist the MEK, as both a Federal Appeals Court in DC and dozens of bipartisan lawmakers have called for. That should be done, not tomorrow, but today, as former Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton said at a conference last month.
Congressman Lee Hamilton, vice-chairman of the 9/11 commission and former Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, "I do not understand why the United States has kept the MEK on the terrorist list for all of these years."
Stressing that he has had "access to classified information," Congressman Hamilton noted, "I am not aware of any facts that require the MEK to be on the terrorist list."
And just last week, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman, the ranking Democrat on the Sub-committee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "I asked for a classified briefing of the relevant subcommittee, the State Department refused because of the litigation, the intelligence community provided it. And frankly, after that classified briefing, I thought that perhaps there was nothing done this century that justified the MEK being on that list and it provided substantial ammunition to the belief that the MEK is on the list as part of the peace offering or concession to Tehran."
It is a sad irony that the US is accommodating the demands of the fundamentalist rulers in Tehran by restricting the anti-fundamentalist MEK. Delisting the MEK will strengthen the entire opposition in Iran, serving to suffocate Tehran's nuclear drive and expansionist agenda.
Washington's Iran policy must include the third option as its most fundamental parameter. The stakes are high and the window of opportunity is closing fast.
1) Iran's opposition Green Movement rejects the MEK: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/26/iran_green_movement/index.html
2) Most, if not all, of the MEK's most prominent supporters are paid handsomely for their efforts. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/ex-officials_say_they_were_paid_to_attend_pro-mek_events.php
3) The MEK has no support in Iran. http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/24/washingtons_dangerous_and_deluded_support_for_the_mek
4) The MEK is a cult. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/magazine/13MUJAHADEEN.html
5) Before his overthrow, the MEK received most of its financial support and all its material support from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2009/140900.htm
6) The MEK supported Saddam by aiding his deadly crackdown against the Kurds and Shia. Maryam Rajavi, the MEK’s leader, even instructed her followers to “take the Kurds under your tanks.” http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/magazine/13MUJAHADEEN.html
7) The MEK strongly supported the takeover of the US Embassy in 1979, advocated for the US hostages to be tried and executed, and even opposed their eventual release. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1993_cr/h930929-terror-pmoi.htm
Obviously the highest level current and former policy-makers just don’t join the majority of the US Congress, which by the way constitute the majority of American people’s representation, to support the PMOI and NCRI, weren’t for the group’s popular support domestically, and amongst Iranian diaspora, as evidenced in the gathering of more than 100,000 people in Paris last June; not to speak of the 120,000 fallen it has offered since 1979.
As for statements to the effect that a great number of Iranian people do not support the PMOI, one should look at the way the savage regime deals with the PMOI supporters, shows that people can not openly support the PMOI, and even under these suffocating conditions, tens of thousands of people have joined demonstrations in support of the organization.
The other issue is that if the PMOI is not a true alternative, why is it that the regime, its supporters and lobbyists are so fearful of the group and as the decent Canadian reporter stated, he was offered a good sum of money to write anti-PMOI article.
As to the group’s activities, there is absolutely no evidence that neither members of the organization, nor even a splinter group has engaged in any unlawful act for more than 7 years, when they renounced all forms of non-political activities.
8) The MEK wasn't added to the Foreign Terrorist Organization List as a goodwill gesture to Iran. It's been on the list since it was first created in 1997, and was listed in the Patterns on Global Terrorism for years prior to that. http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/annual_reports.html
9) The Bush administration determined in 2007 that “MEK leadership and members across the world maintain the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.” http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82738.htm
10) The MEK abuses its own members in Camp Ashraf and has even tortured at least two individuals to death. http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain?page=printdoc&docid=45d085002
To state the obvious, American credibility and goodwill among the Iranian people would be destroyed if the US supports this group.
Thanks for this great and timely piece! Recently, Ms. Clinton has said that to shape a new policy in response to the developments in a country, US is looking for the moments of history when a critical mass of people who stand for their rights is formed. Your article correctly elaborates that such a window of opportunity has formed now and will fade if not utilized promptly and wisely.
From what I read, most of the negative comments for this article have really not paid attention to the analysis of provided facts, rather have seen it an opportunity to express their discontent towards the MEK. They behave as if the MEK is the center of problem in Iran and the regime doesn't need any focus! MEK doesn't want anything from the US other than its legitimate right of demanding to be removed from the black list. If MEK does not have any support in Iran, let people decide it. Why some comments insist US should not delist the MEK? Are the favoring the Iranian regime?
GlobePoicy
Let me open it up for you folks. The money trail has dried up for the lobbyists and mercenaries on the payroll of the countries in tumult in the Middle East and North Africa, and not many of them can justify their support for these folks. So, the mullahs have opened up their deep pockets and any and every cockroach is competing for those petro-bucks stolen from the the little guys in the developing and for that matter the developed world.
That’s exactly why we see all these mercenaries lined up to ingratiate themselves, so that the Savages of Tehran take notice and put them on the payroll. What else could these lowest forms of life be up to, other than the preservation a barbaric regime, and nobody can engage in this heinous act of violating THE RIGHTS OF THE Iranian people and their main resistance force, these Children of the Iranian People’s Liberation and the Emancipation of her women; the PMOI/MEK?MKO?
However, history has proven these swamp creatures quite wrong over and over again, for, one cannot steal light from the Sun!!! Once the small amount mud water is dried up, so is their existence!!!
GP
OTTAWA -
... John Thompson, who heads up the Mackenzie Institute, a security minded think-tank, is often called on by media outlets to offer up analysis, says he was offered $80,000 by a man tied to Iran’s mission in Canada.
“They wanted me to publish a piece on the Mujahedin-e khalq," he said. "Iran is trying to get other countries to label it as a terrorist cult.” Thompson says he turned down the offer.
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"All of our tools of persuasion of coerce Iran have failed. Iran has a fear of PMOI due its popularity and secular nature, they have the fear of PMOI its encouragement of free elections and rule of law, Iran has the fear of PMOI due to freedom of religion and no nuclear weapon or weapons of mass destruction, Iran has the fear of the PMOI due to freedom of speech and press. Right now Iran fears the PMOI." said Dell Dailey, Head of the U.S. State Department Counter Terrorism office in the Bush Administration, in an international conference on Iran in Brussels, January 25.
(NCRI) - The clerical regime is grappling with ways to confront expanding social networks organized by the main opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), a mullahs' senior official has said.
The Director of the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) revealed growing anxiety over the growing popularity of the PMOI among young people and protestors across Iran.
“Today, we are confronted with an anti-revolutionary movement and the organized networks of the PMOI,” Hassan Taeb was quoted as saying.
In remarks published by the state-run Fars news agency, he added, “As the dust settles, the battle lines become clearer between the revolution and those who oppose it.”
Meanwhile another mullah and a member of the regime’s Assembly of Experts, Ahmad Alamolhoda, said the main target of protests in Iran has been the regime’s Supreme Leader.
http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-resistance/10036-pmois-organized-social-networks-challenge-for-mullahs
Second, this excerpt is from 1987 (contemporize)!
Third, Dr. Safavi is a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Fourth, the fact that you have nothing to say against Mr. Safavi except a little excerpt you found on Google, means you are really really desperate to find something incirimianting but can't.
Fifth, the fact that you feel so compelled to attack him personally indicates you can't argue against what he says.
And, finally, if your intent is to "reveal" something about other people's identity that we didn't know, how about giving us your own identity, too?
“Wow a lot of regime loyalists and apologists are fuming here.”
Do the numbers prioritize the substance or vice versa?
Faramarz Fathi
Once again a columnist with conscience and geopolitical savvy has penned a piece worthy of history books. The author’s accurate enumeration of threats presented by a barbaric and uncontained Iran, short-term and strategically, is quite prescient and important.
One hopes that more of the these articles are written by European and American journalists of integrity and decency, and with good comprehension of history and geopolitics, in condemnation of the Savages of Tehran, as the author of this article has done, and appeal to the US State Department to remove the name of the PMOI/MEK/MKO, the main and most organized opposition force against the Caligula’s and Nero’s of our time, from the infamous terrorist list.
LEF
Also, tightening the security and freedom in Iran a little after 1979 rev by the IR government (weather rightfully or not) mainly due to MKO and US hostility was one of the main reasons of loosing a lot of various forms of freedom in Iran in the first place. The lost freedom that there is so much struggle in Iran now to bring back. The freedom and independence that people of Iran have paid and continue to pay absolutely high a price for.
Mr. Safavi, you and MKO are harmful not only to people in Iran, but also to your brain washed MKO followers.
Mr. Safavi, you, MKO and US gov are dangerously counter productive to freedom in Iran.
Four years later, the Wall Street Journal wrote, " In 1997, the State Department added the MEK to a list of global terrorist organizations as 'a signal' of the U.S.'s desire for rapprochement with Tehran's reformists, says Martin Indyk, who at the time was assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs. President Khatami's government 'considered it a pretty big deal,' Mr. Indyk says."
Read more on the politics behind the designation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-safavi/reality-check-understandi_b_520592.html
What Iranians want is freedom and the to get rid of this evil regime.