With the new administration taking power in the United States, many of Iran’s apologists, parallel to the regime’s blackmailing campaign, hope to return to what they call “the golden era” of appeasement. With Iran’s increasing domestic and international malign activities, the world community should take a firm stand against the regime.
The European countries seem to have closed their eyes on the regime’s malign activities. Despite several events within the last few years, the European countries have not severed their diplomatic relations with the regime.
The recent expulsions of Iranian diplomats from France, the Netherlands, and Albania bear this out. Those expulsions came in response to recent acts by the regime’s diplomat-terrorist, involved in terrorist plots against Iranian dissidents on European soil. The plots in question run the gamut from targeted assassinations to attempted bombings of major Resistance’s gatherings such as the “Free Iran” rally that took place just outside Paris in June 2018. That particular incident led not only to expulsions but to the first ever terrorism trial featuring an Iranian regime’s diplomat as one of the defendants.
Following a lengthy investigation, that trial formally began last November in Belgium, where two of the regime’s operatives were caught in possession of the 500 grams of TATP explosive that they were planning to use to disrupt the gathering of over 100,000 expatriates and kill the Iranian opposition leader, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. Public revelations from the case include the fact that the explosive material was smuggled into Europe by the principal defendant, Iran’s incarcerated diplomat-terrorist, Assadollah Assadi, via a commercial flight while he was traveling on a diplomatic passport.
Assadi’s employment as the third counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Vienna allowed him to evade ordinary security screenings when traveling into and throughout Europe. This in turn helped him to cultivate a network of terrorist operatives whom he visited and provided with cash payments across at least 11 countries. Only three of these operatives are known to have taken part in the French terror plot, and so only they have been publicly identified and brought up on charges.
In all likelihood, there are elements of the network that remain unknown even to European intelligence agencies. And given the importance of Assadi’s diplomatic status in the 2018 terror plot, it stands to reason that the Iranian regime has installed other terrorist operatives in similar roles over the years. Indeed, shortly after Assadi’s arrest was announced, a spokesperson for Belgian law enforcement declared that the vast majority of Iran’s supposed consular officials are actually agents of the regime’s Secret Service.
Such observations ought to stand out as earnest warnings about the inherent danger of maintaining normal, unconditional diplomatic relations with the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. They should certainly prompt those governments to recognize that they are at greater risk of Iranian terrorism by continuing their relations with Tehran.
Fortunately, Belgium is pointing the way toward more appropriate measures by actually pursuing conviction of the Assadi, the Iranian diplomat cum terrorist. The verdict in his case is due any day now, and prosecutors have asked that he be given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. This will go a long way toward demonstrating that the regime’s officials are not actually immune from consequences for their support of terrorism. But that message must ultimately be reinforced by demands for broader accountability.
The prosecutors in Assadi’s case have made it absolutely clear that in masterminding the 2018 terror plot, Assadi was not acting as a rogue agent but was operating under orders from high officials within the Iranian regime. The Iranian Resistance has already revealed that the orders in question ultimately came both from the regime’s President Hassan Rouhani and from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The regime’s foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, cherished by EU leaders as “moderate,” facilitated the terrorist plot and provided diplomatic to Assadi.
These facts confirm how deeply terrorism is entrenched in the structure of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. This in turn highlights how much effort the international community will have to put into compelling the regime’s leadership to change its strategy and conclusively disavow its use of terrorism as a form of statecraft. The regime has shown that it still won’t change its way. Thus, the democratic nations of the world will have to take a firm stand by isolating the regime completely and end the appeasement policy. The EU leaders should also shut down the regime’s embassies and expel its, agents. Thus, guaranteeing their own security.
Source » ncr-iran