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Iran’s growing voices of dissent

Iranians demonstrating outside Downing Street. In Iran itself there is a brutal crackdown on any kind of dissent against the government.Hossein Abedini

YORKSHIRE POST – Hossein Abedini is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the alliance of Iranian opposition groups.

AFTER North Korea outraged the world by testing an atomic weapon, what of that other potential member of the nuclear club, Iran, the only nation to speak up this week in North Korea’s defence?

It is now more than a year since the former Revolutionary Guards commander, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took office as president of Iran and Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the alliance of Iranian opposition groups, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), rightly described that event as a declaration of war on the Iranian people and the international community.

Ahmadinejad moved quickly to appoint his accomplices from the Revolutionary Guards to every position of power in Iran. His Cabinet was dubbed "the who’s who of terrorism".

At home, the regime expanded and strengthened its oppressive forces, ordering them to crack down hard on any form of dissent.

Away from home, the mullahs stepped up their terrorism, most evidently in the Middle East and, in particular, Iraq. At the same time, they redoubled their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and Ahmadinejad himself called for the annihilation of Israel, which the possession of such weapons would, of course, make possible.

In adopting a confrontational approach towards the international community, the mullahs’ propaganda machine has worked hard to convince the world that its nuclear programmes are a matter of national pride.

Yet it is telling that such an oppressive regime has been unable even to force people on to the streets of Tehran to demonstrate any show of support.

Instead, according to the NCRI’s network of supporters inside Iran, since Ahmadinejad took office, Iran has actually been the scene of more than 4,200 demonstrations and protests on a scale never before seen during the 27 years of the mullahs’ rule.

In May, people in four major Azeri-dominated provinces in north-west Iran took part in a mass uprising, which at its height saw more than 100,000 people on the streets. More than 10 demonstrators lost their lives when government forces opened fire.

At the same time, a wave of student uprisings took the country by storm. In the protests, the demonstrators attacked government buildings, while chanting "down with dictatorship" and "in Iran the cry is freedom".

Only two months before that, more than 10,000 were arrested during a strike by Tehran’s transit workers. In the south-western city of Ahwaz, anti-government demonstrators were hanged in public.

The theme of these protests, including a demonstration by thousands of women in Tehran in June, was that – contrary to the impression that the government wants to give the world – the people of Iran want change and are willing to pay the price.

A brutal crackdown on dissent, widespread summary arrests, torture and barbaric punishments, as well as a manifold increase in executions, highlight the price that Iranians are paying for the pursuit of their basic rights.

Only last month, the Iranian regime executed 28-year-old Valliollah Feiz-Mahdavi, an opposition supporter who had spent five years in prisons, including 546 days in the torture chambers of the Ministry of Intelligence.

The NCRI, with its network inside Iran, was the first to expose the mullahs’ clandestine nuclear projects. It enjoys great support among Iranians and has the ability to mobilise the Iranian population.

In July, 30,000 Iranians gathered in Paris from across Europe to support the resistance and the solution it offers to the Iran nuclear crisis – democratic change in Iran.

As Maryam Rajavi has repeatedly stated, the Iranian resistance does not seek financial aid or any other support from the West, but it does expect a realistic policy vis-à-vis the mullahs.

The first step in creating such a policy would be the removal of the unjust terror tag from the main Iranian opposition party, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), since the terror tag was at the heart of Washington’s former policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.

Removing this tag and imposing sanctions against the Iranian government at the UN Security Council would send a clear signal to the mullahs that the international community is serious in its demands. Such steps are supported by a majority of backbench MPs and more than 150 members of the House of Lords.

As the Iranian regime’s then top nuclear negotiator said last year, the mullahs have been "duping" the West by pretending to negotiate, thereby buying four years in which to aggressively advance their nuclear programmes.

The West, however, is now finally coming to realise that, no matter what concessions or incentives are offered to the mullahs, they will not abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

After all, nuclear weapons are a prerequisite for the survival of the theocratic regime and for the furtherance of their expansionist Islamic fundamentalist policies.

However, no sooner had the West begun to realise this, and to consider the necessary policy changes, than the mullahs moved on to their tried and tested plan B – terrorism.

In escalating the crises across the Middle East, most notably in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, the mullahs aim to blackmail the West and buy yet more time in which to complete their first nuclear weapon.

In light of the Iranian regime’s failure to suspend uranium enrichment as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1696, time is running out.

Either the international community will stand firm and end up ahead of the mullahs by aligning itself with the people of Iran and forcing the Iranian government on to the defensive, or the region will rapidly head towards even greater tension, as the Ahmadinajad regime races towards its first nuclear bomb.

The choice, and its consequences, are ours to decide.

13 October 2006