To date, over a year into Rouhani’s allegedly ‘moderate’ presidency, more than 1,000 people, many of them political prisoners, have been executed. On average, a prisoner has been hanged in public or in prisons in various cities in Iran every seven hours. The executed include women and teenagers, and often people who were under the age of 15 when they were first arrested. Large numbers of prisoners are now executed collectively in groups of 21, 11 and 6 persons. This is while thousands of prisoners in various prisons in the country are on death row.
Meanwhile IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the merciless Basij force, has announced the formation of a ‘Council of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’. The mission of this institution is the suppression of youth, particularly young women and girls, under the Mullahs’ pretext of ‘mal-veiling’. Organised gangs affiliated with the Mullahs’ regime have been splashing acid on the faces of a large number of young women in Esfahan and other cities to punish them for ‘mal-veiling’. The clerical regime has resorted to a wave of executions and suppressive measures in order to heighten the atmosphere of intimidation in society and to prevent an outbreak of protests.
And yet, despite the danger he poses, the West has fallen head-over-heels in love with the broadly smiling Hassan Rouhani. Indeed Rouhani is no longer smiling, he is laughing, literally all the way to the bank! His tactics of deception have fooled the West into reducing sanctions and effectively removing any threat of military intervention, and as a result, the national currency, the rial, is doing quite well, while the Tehran stock exchange has staged a remarkable rally.
Meanwhile the West, crowing about our success in achieving meaningful dialogue with Iran, has blunted the only remaining tool with which we could have held the Mullahs to account, because our main weapon in dealing with Iran is economic. In the spring of 2014, over 100 European businessmen visited Tehran to explore new, lucrative contracts; the Iranians even held a major energy conference in London in the summer of 2014, when leading oil companies from the West were encouraged to reopen contracts for oil and gas exploitation in Iran. This renewed surge of interest in commercial profits despite violations of basic human rights in Iran, has rescued the evil Mullah regime when it was on the brink of collapse.
And what has the West won in return? Of course there are some good things in the nuclear agreement, but it is a temporary stopgap. It has actually achieved very little. It only dealt with the enrichment question. What about the Iranian military machine? What about their missile delivery systems? What about the estimated 19,000 centrifuges? Why didn’t we demand the dismantling of 14,000 of these machines? We have capped the accumulation of enriched uranium, but failed to stop research and development into more advanced centrifuge technology. This does little to stop the threat of a future nuclear-armed Iran.
Indeed in a wide-ranging interview Dr Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Nuclear Chief, claimed that, ‘The entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on . . . Iran can reverse its nuclear concessions [made in the joint plan of action] in a few hours.’
The horrific events in Gaza in July and August 2014 brought international condemnation against Israel. For one country in the Middle East, this was exactly the outcome they had sought. Iran has supplied missiles and munitions and other sophisticated weaponry to Hamas for years. They have provided money and training for the Hamas fighters. Their objective was to provoke Israel into a ground war, and the bloody result, with gruesome photos of dead children on TV screens and newspapers around the world, is the best possible recruiting sergeant for fundamentalist Islam and the Iranian Mullahs’ vision of a global Islamist movement united against the West and its apostate, secular supporters. They did the same in Lebanon during the July 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The fascist regime in Tehran is the main sponsor of war and terror in the Middle East, and the tragic outcome in Gaza is exactly what Tehran wanted. It distracts domestic attention in Iran from the economic crisis caused by the downturn in the price of oil, and distracts international attention from the Mullahs’ rush to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran’s foreign policy objective is to become the dominant regional power in the Middle East. They want to unite the Islamic world in submission to their own austere and disturbing vision of a totalitarian and fundamentalist Islamic brotherhood, where human rights, women’s rights and freedom of speech are ground into the dust. Shamefully, the West has done nothing to confront or expose Iranian aggression. Faced with mounting evidence of the Mullahs’ sponsorship of terror, the West has gone out of its way to appease Tehran.
Iran is like a poisonous spider, sitting at the centre of a deadly web that seeks to extend its malign influence across the entire Middle East. The Mullahs export terror. They support the murderous Assad regime in Syria and they fund and arm Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. They relentlessly spread their toxic dominion across Iraq, using Nouri al-Maliki in the past as their willing puppet, until their ruthless sectarian policies led to civil war and the virtual breakup of Iraq. The revolutionary uprising by the Sunni tribes quickly destabilised the country and provided an ideal opportunity for the Islamic State to exploit. They poured over the border from Syria, seizing many Iraqi cities and rapidly advancing to within 50 miles of Baghdad.
But, such was the West’s enthusiastic love affair with the so-called moderate Iranian President Rouhani, that the EU’s almost entirely useless High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Ashton, even decided to pay an official visit to Tehran in the spring of 2014. Her visit coincided with Israel’s interception of a ship from Iran carrying dozens of long-range surface-to-surface rockets, assault weapons and hundreds of thousands of bullets, destined for Palestinian militants in Gaza. Iran is the world’s leading exporter and bankroller of terrorists, and their cat-and-mouse attempts to persuade Baroness Ashton and others that they have no intention of producing nuclear weapons is a farce.
Ironically, Baroness Ashton landed in Tehran on Saturday 8 March – International Women’s Day! Iran’s repression of women is globally renowned. In fact, on 4 March, the regime had hanged a 25-year-old woman who had been held in prison since she was a teenager. Her name was Farzaneh Moradi, and she had a ten-year-old daughter.
As already noted, Iran has hanged at least 1,000 people, many in public, since Rouhani came to power. Many women have been victims of organised acid attacks for mal-veiling. Just before Ashton’s ill-judged visit, there was a shocking public execution of a 26-year-old young man in the city of Karaj, where the hangmen even deprived the condemned man from seeing his mother who was present at the scene, causing a great public outcry. In addition, the Mullahs’ Supreme Court approved a sentence to blind a man and cut off his ear and nose. Ashton, of course, in her fawning supplication to the fascist Mullahs, failed to condemn any of these barbarities during her visit, and inevitably, her presence in Tehran was exploited as a propaganda tool by the regime.
Nor did Ashton’s visit to Tehran stop the Mullahs from piling pressure on Iraq to kill or hand over the Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty. It is time the West woke up. We have seen countless initiatives to stop the nuclear programme. All have failed. We have seen the appointment of Special Envoys like Dan Fried, Jean de Ruyt and more recently Jane Holl Lute, tasked with resolving the Ashraf crisis. All have failed. We have seen the cack-handed efforts by the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Iraq, Martin Kobler, pave the way for the death, destruction and incarceration of innocent men and women.
We cannot continue with the policy of appeasement toward Iran, nor can we countenance military intervention. But we can show support for the vast majority of Iranian citizens who long for freedom and who pray for the fall of the fascist regime. The most tangible way to show our support for the Iranian people is to support the biggest, best-organised and legitimate opposition – the PMOI. To do so would be to send a clear message to the Mullahs in Tehran that we are no longer prepared to stand idly by while they spread terror and death across
the Middle East and the wider world.
In tandem, we must rescue the unarmed refugees trapped in Camp Liberty in Iraq. Since their protection was handed to the Iraqis by the US military, they have suffered 26 separate attacks resulting in 116 dead, 1,300 injured, 7 hostages (6 of whom are women) who are still unaccounted for, and 24 dead because of the inhuman medical siege. All of this has been done wilfully under the direct instructions of Nouri al-Maliki and with the active connivance and encouragement of the Iranian regime. Maliki has stepped aside as Prime Minister in Iraq and his immunity from prosecution, which came with that job, has now vanished. He must immediately be indicted for crimes against humanity and brought before the international courts for trial.
In the meantime, rather than allowing ourselves to slide into the depths of depression at the failure of our politicians, let us remember the words of Victor Hugo:
Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.
Iran has suffered a long period of darkness. The light of liberty has truly been eclipsed. But the Mullahs’ days are numbered. The reappearance of the light is imminent; in fact we can see the first faint glimmers of dawn breaking through the blackness and the torchbearers are the PMOI in Camp Liberty and their supporters around the world. I count myself privileged to say I am with them every step of the way. I pray that one day soon I will walk hand-in-hand with them through the streets of a liberated Tehran.
I am Ashrafi.
More than two centuries ago the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote verses of praise for King Robert The Bruce of Scotland, which could become the PMOI battle cry for their campaign for freedom and justice in Iran.
By Oppression’s woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
LIBERTY’S in every blow!
Let us do – or die!
Postscript
At the time of going to press there are still some 2,700 Iranian refugees, including 700 women, being held under unbearable conditions in Camp Liberty, near Baghdad Airport. The siege by the Iraqi government has continued, denying access to the camp for basic commodities such as food, water, fuel and medical supplies. The lack of fuel meant that subsequently all of the camp’s electricity generators stopped working. Air-conditioning immediately ceased to function and with outside temperatures soaring above 48°C in the blazing summer heat, many of the residents quickly became seriously dehydrated, requiring urgent medical attention which was also denied. In addition, water pumps stopped working, the contents of fridges and freezers began to rot and septic tanks overflowed with polluted sewerage. Liberty was rapidly becoming hell on earth.
UNAMI, who signed the Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Iraq against the wishes of the Iranian refugees, has now abandoned those men and women to their fate. Despite having repeatedly guaranteed their safety and security when they coaxed and cajoled the residents into deserting their long-term home at Camp Ashraf and moving to the tiny Liberty concentration camp, UNAMI has now stopped visiting Liberty altogether, concerned for the safety of their own personnel against the background of rising violence in Iraq. Similarly, UNHCR, which interviewed every one of the residents and provided each with formal refugee status, has also abandoned them to their fate, having failed to operate the promised ‘revolving door’ policy that would have seen them interviewed, registered and immediately re-settled to countries of safety.
The government of Nouri al-Maliki, in its dying days, used this hiatus to apply maximum suffering on the beleaguered refugees, and this is still going on. I and others had warned about this looming crisis in numerous letters, statements and communications to the US Government, the United Nations Secretary General and the EU’s High Representative, but as usual, our pleas were ignored. The United States has particular responsibility, since the residents’ current situation is a direct result of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when senior American officials gave written assurances to each of the residents that their safety and security would be guaranteed. But so far over a hundred residents have been murdered in repeated brutal attacks by Maliki’s forces and more have died due to the inhuman medical restrictions imposed by the Iraqi government. Countless residents have been maimed and wounded in the recurring attacks and violence.
This shocking betrayal of innocent, unarmed men and women by the leading global institutions and governments of the UN, the EU and the US must rank alongside some of the worst duplicity in history. Having forcibly herded these men and women into a tiny killing ground, they then walked away, knowing that the inevitable outcome would be bloodshed and death.
I am deeply grateful to all those senior politicians, judges, generals and journalists who have put their own personal reputations on the line by exposing this perfidy and demanding action. Sadly, our collective cries have been ignored. It is a shameful chapter in human history and I can only hope that someone in office, somewhere, reading this account, will cry ‘enough’ and ride courageously to the rescue of these besieged refugees. In the meantime, our efforts to save the 2,700 will continue, as will our determination to bring to justice those who murdered and maimed the innocents.
As the Irish statesman Edmund Burke famously said: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
Struan Stevenson
March 2015
Books and Publications Consulted
Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr, The Mujahedin-E Khalq, MEK, Shackled by a Twisted History (University of Baltimore, 2013).
Friends of a Free Iran, People’s Mojahedin of Iran – Mission Report.
The Mujahedin-e-Khalq, report by the British Foreign Office (March, 2001).
Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (Yale University Press, 1992).
Mohammad Mohaddessin, Enemies of the Ayatollahs (Pluto Press, 2004).
National Council of Resistance of Iran, Meet the NCRI (June, 2014).
Tahar Boumedra, The United Nations and Human Rights in Iraq – The Untold Story of Camp Ashraf (New Generation Publishing, 2013).
Hengameh Haj Hassan, Face to Face with the Beast – Iranian Women in Mullahs’ Prisons (Homa Association, 2013).
William R. Polk, Understanding Iraq (I. B. Taurus, 2006).
Christopher de Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia – Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup (Bodley Head, 2012).
Patrick Cockburn, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq (Faber and Faber, 2008).
Index
Notes: Arabic names with the prefix ‘al-’ are indexed under the main part of the name, e.g. Nouri al-Maliki is indexed under ‘Maliki’. However, organisations and places beginning with al-, such as al-Qaeda, are indexed under ‘al-’.
Abadi, Haider al- ref1
Abdullah, King of Jordan ref1
Abdullah, Dr Soha ref1
Abdullah, Dr Tarik ref1, ref2
Abehesht, Bahar ref1
Adibi, Soraya ref1
Agence France-Presse ref1, ref2
Agmashe, Dr Sadeq ref1
Ahmadi, Amir Ali Seyed ref1, ref2
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12
Ahmed, Dr Hamid K. ref1, ref2
AIVD (Netherlands intelligence service) ref1
Ajgeiy, Delavar ref1
al-Anbar province ref1, ref2
al-Iraqiya ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
al-Jazeera TV channel ref1
al-Mukhtar militia ref1
al-Nuri, Great Mosque of ref1
al-Qaeda ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Albayber, Sattar ref1
Alizadeh, Fatimah ref1
Allawi, Dr Ayad ref1, ref
2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9
Alrafaee, Sheik Dr Rafie ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Ameri, Faleh al-Fayadh al- ref1
Amnesty International ref1, ref2, ref3
Anfal Campaign ref1
Arab Spring ref1
Arak nuclear site ref1
Arian Homeland ref1
Asaib terrorists ref1
Ashraf Camp ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37
medical siege of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
bombed by US forces ref1, ref2
building of camp ref1
US forces leaving ref1
assaults on, July 2009 ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
hunger strikes at ref1
ultimatum on closure ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
blockade of ref1
assaults on, April 2011 ref1, ref2, ref3
massacre at, 1 September 2013 ref1, ref2
Memorandum of Understanding on ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Stevenson Plan for ref1, ref2
moving to Camp Liberty ref1
final attacks on ref1
Ashton, Baroness Catherine ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12
Assad, Bashar al- ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Atomic Energy Organisation Iran ref1
Auvers-sur-Oise ref1, ref2
Ayatollahs – see Khamenei and Khomeini
Azadanlou, Masoumeh ref1
Azhadi, Fereshteh ref1
Aziz, Abbawi ref1
Ba’ath Party ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Badizadegan, Ali-Asghar ref1
Badr Organisation ref1, ref2
Baghdad
bomb outrage in ref1, ref2
Green Zone ref1, ref2, ref3
hospitals in ref1, ref2, ref3
hotels in ref1
poor state of infrastructure ref1
Self-Sacrifice Page 28
