Terrorism is indispensable to the Iranian regime’s foreign policy and diplomacy and for more than 40 years, this regime is using this as the main tool against its opponents abroad, as well as against other countries for blackmailing.
But it should be said that 2021 was a humiliating defeat for the regime in this field and the regime was finally made accountable for its terror acts as some of its most notable terror cases have reached the point of resolution.
One of these cases is the regime’s failed bomb plot in France, whose investigation dates back to 2018. In July 2018, Iranian government diplomat Assadollah Assadi, for whom the third secretary of Iran’s embassy in Austria was only a camouflage, was arrested alongside three accomplices. He was a senior employee of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) and an experienced terrorist who also had a record in Iraq against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
The plan was to detonate a bomb that contained 500 grams of the highly explosive TATP, which is also used by ISIS in operations, at the National Resistance Council of Iran’s (NCRI) annual rally attended by nearly 100,000 people on the outskirts of Paris.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the NCRI’s President-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi was the main target of this terror plot.
Police investigation discovered that the explosion of this bomb would have killed hundreds of people and injured thousands. The investigation continued from the time of Assadi’s arrest until the beginning of 2021. On February 4, 2021, the judges proceeding over the criminal trial received the results of an extensive investigation that included not only the Belgian police but also the German Federal Police, the French DGSE/DGSI, and others, before sentencing Assadi to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence for this type of crime. His three accomplices, mercenaries who had been hired by the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence, Mehrdad Arefani, Nasimeh Naami, and Amir Saadouni, were sentenced to 18, 17, 15 years in prison respectively.
These sentences were very important because the Iranian government has carried out at least 450 terrorist operations around the world over the past 40 years, but this was the only case where a sitting regime diplomat has been convicted and imprisoned.
The explosives for the bomb plot were transferred from Tehran to Europe by Assadollah Assadi on board a plane. He carried the bomb in his bag as a diplomatic shipment to avoid security measures at the airports he passed through.
This verdict is unprecedented in the history of Europe. In particular, the judgment states that this was not an individual act, but an act carried out under the control of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.
Court meetings were also held later in the year on November 17 and 18, 2021 where the entire case was reviewed, and the proceedings were widely covered by the press. The Prosecutor detailed how the bomb was to be planted, how it was handed over, how it was delivered, and how it was supposed to enter the conference venue.
Nasimeh Naami claimed that it was a sound bomb and would not cause many casualties in the event of an explosion. However, two bomb experts testified that the bomb was deadly and had the power to kill up to a radius of 53 meters in an area of 3,000 square meters, and the closer people were to the center of the explosion, the more casualties it would have caused.
When we speak about the Iranian regime’s terrorism, we are facing state and structural terrorism, a government whose entire foreign policy over the past forty years has rested on the two elements of exporting terrorism and fundamentalism.
The embassies of each country around the world are at the service of a series of matters that follow and solve the problems of the people of that country. The Iranian government’s embassies are the nerve centers of espionage and terrorism, and embassies are structured around these objectives. So, whoever has a diplomatic rank is at the service of terrorism and many of the regime’s foreign diplomats have even been recruited from the Revolutionary Guards’ terrorist Quds Force.
Source » irannewsupdate