Countering Iran’s Threat, Strategies for Regional Stability

-
Image
  Written by Mahmoud Hakamian Two-minute read On Sunday morning, April 14, the Iranian regime launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, escalating tensions in the Middle East. Despite military experts’ assessments that the attack failed, it underscores  Iran’s role as a focal point  of regional conflict. The October 7th attack sent shockwaves globally. Despite ample evidence implicating the Iranian regime, Western governments dismissed Tehran’s involvement, adhering to a flawed appeasement policy toward the primary state sponsor of terrorism. They disregarded explicit statements from Revolutionary Guards  (IRGC) commanders boasting  about their direct role in the attack. For decades, the Iranian Resistance has urged the international community to adopt a resolute stance against the Iranian regime’s aggression and terrorism. Despite persistent calls, the failed appeasement policy of the West allowed Tehran to escalate its belligerent activities, including financing, arming, train
Post a Comment

Raisi’s UN platform will boost Iran regime’s sense of impunity

-

 By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Hard-line Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who is known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” should be held accountable for his crimes rather than given a platform to spread his propaganda.

According to human rights organizations, since Raisi took office last year, Iran has conducted a “horrific wave of executions” — an ominous accomplishment for a regime already recognized as having the world’s highest rate of executions per capita. In Raisi’s first 12 months as president, Tehran carried out more than 520 executions, far surpassing the total for 2021 (366) and 2020 (255).



In the meantime, the regime’s judiciary has implemented a number of barbaric sentences of corporal punishment, including the amputation of convicts’ fingers. Raisi himself issued a directive for stricter enforcement of “chastity and hijab” last month, allowing for more “Guidance Patrols” to harass and even assault women in public for allegedly flouting forced veiling laws. The death last week of 22-year old Mahsa Amini, who was in the custody of the regime’s morality police, has sparked outrage and protests

Efforts to reassert the regime’s hard-line ideology have also extended far beyond Iran’s borders. The US Department of Justice last month unsealed its case against a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who had been observed actively attempting to facilitate the assassination of former National Security Adviser John Bolton on US soil. It appears that the known activities of this member of the IRGC date back to only two months after Raisi was sworn in as president.

Assassination plots against Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are examples of Tehran’s escalating brazenness. And those individual threats are dwarfed by others that have been directed against entire communities, like that of Ashraf 3, the Albanian residence of about 3,000 expatriate dissidents affiliated with the leading pro-democracy opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

In July, the NCRI was urged to cancel a planned rally at Ashraf 3 after Albanian authorities revealed there had been credible terrorist threats made against it. That revelation coincided with a number of arrests of Albanian residents who were believed to be conspiring with the Iranian regime. The arrests were the culmination of a four-year investigation that evidently grew out of the prior disruption of a bomb plot targeting the same community in 2018. Later that same year, Iranian intelligence operatives were also thwarted in a similar attempt to bomb an international gathering near Paris that had been organized by the NCRI.

Those earlier plots most likely highlight the very reason why Raisi was designated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to take over the presidency. The hard-liner’s promotion came in the wake of a series of nationwide anti-government uprisings, in which the opposition played a leading role, according to Khamenei himself.

Raisi has historically played significant roles in violent crackdowns on the democratic opposition. He was one of four officials to serve on the Tehran “death commission” that interrogated political detainees at the Tehran and Gohardasht prisons during the summer of 1988. This was to execute a religious decree, or fatwa, issued by the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, which accused political opponents of “waging war on God.” Khomeini ordered that “those who are making the decisions must not hesitate, nor show any doubt or be concerned with details,” when executing members of the opposition.

Over the course of about three months in 1988, the regime executed about 30,000 political prisoners, at least 90 percent of whom were sympathizers of the NCRI. No one was held accountable for any of the killings until 2019, when Swedish authorities arrested a former Iranian prison official named Hamid Noury. He was this year handed a life sentence for crimes against humanity. The international community’s prior inaction in the face of countless testimonials about the massacre seems to have provided the Iranian regime with an abiding sense of impunity in matters related to human rights.

Western powers have not shown any interest in formally investigating the massacre, much less demanding accountability for higher-level officials. But many of these officials hold their senior positions precisely because of the actions they took to suppress dissent in the 1980s. Raisi is a prime example.

By giving the Iranian president the platform to spread his propaganda, the UN and, by extension, the US are legitimizing the regime’s practice of lionizing human rights abusers. Furthermore, this will reinvigorate the sense of impunity enjoyed by the Raisi administration and the regime as a whole. The UN and the US ought to condemn the actions of Raisi, both while on the death commission and as president, and make it clear that he should be held accountable.

• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

This article was first published by arabnews

Join us on YouTube:

Iran Panorama

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIrWDQd08-2QWsBzWpDo5jA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

General Call for Signing a Statement on the Investigation of Killers of the Massacre of Prisoners

-
Image
Link to call signing: https://www.change.org/p/un-secretary-general-call-for-justice-for-the-1988-iran-massacre Let's move our hands to change our world In the age of consciousness, and in the 21st century, brutality and barbarism must be stopped, this is not worthy of humanity. At the first step, you should be the center of this cruelty and the godfather of crime and murder, terrorism and fundamentalism that nobody is part of Iran's terrorist government. The fact is that the killing and execution of political and conscientious prisoners in public or in prisons is secretly in its astronomical dimensions on the coin of killing innocent people abroad by this regime. The issuance of terrorism and the support of fundamentalist and terrorist groups in this regime is institutionalized and is part of the constitution. The crimes committed by perpetrators and groups affiliated with this corrupt and expansionist state in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq
Read more

Countering Iran’s Threat, Strategies for Regional Stability

-
Image
  Written by Mahmoud Hakamian Two-minute read On Sunday morning, April 14, the Iranian regime launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, escalating tensions in the Middle East. Despite military experts’ assessments that the attack failed, it underscores  Iran’s role as a focal point  of regional conflict. The October 7th attack sent shockwaves globally. Despite ample evidence implicating the Iranian regime, Western governments dismissed Tehran’s involvement, adhering to a flawed appeasement policy toward the primary state sponsor of terrorism. They disregarded explicit statements from Revolutionary Guards  (IRGC) commanders boasting  about their direct role in the attack. For decades, the Iranian Resistance has urged the international community to adopt a resolute stance against the Iranian regime’s aggression and terrorism. Despite persistent calls, the failed appeasement policy of the West allowed Tehran to escalate its belligerent activities, including financing, arming, train
Read more

Paris Conference Demands Justice for Victims of Iran’s 1988 Massacre and Accountability for Regime Officials

-
Image
  Written by Shamsi Saadati A conference held in Paris on August 21, 2023, commemorated the 35th anniversary of the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. Titled “Four Decades of Crime against Humanity and Impunity from Punishment,” the event gathered esteemed international judges and jurists from all around the world. In her  opening remarks ,  Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran , stressed the need to end impunity for the Iranian regime’s leaders, emphasizing accountability for their involvement in genocide and crimes against humanity. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi said, “For the past four decades, the regime’s central slogan has been “Death to the Hypocrites.” This chant is echoed without fail at every official ceremony. The term “hypocrite” is the regime’s derogatory reference to the PMOI. In its relations with any country in the world, the regime has declared its most significant red line to be any association with the PMOI. What pr
Read more