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Iranian aggression can be contained

Iranian-military

In an article for Ground Report, a global citizen journalism site, Heshmat Alavi argued yesterday that the terrorism committed by the Iranian regime could be stopped by holding it to account for its treatment of its citizens.

Demonstrating the clear relationship between the way the regime behaves at home and the manner in which it conducts itself abroad, Alavi concluded that successive US administrations have made the same “foreign policy mistake” in overlooking the “egregious” human rights violations committed by the Iranian Government.

Repression and the “export of the revolution” are two sides of the same coin: regime survival for a “reactionary” government in the teeth of an educated population who witnessed the theocrats’ hijacking of the 1979 revolution.

Alavi cited a most telling speech at the funeral of one of the IRGC commanders killed in Syria, by Ali Saeidi, Khamenei’s representative to the IRGC: “Today Imam Khamenei announced that Syria is our front line… because if we were not in Syria, today we would have lost Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.” (Fars News Agency Nov 19, 2015)

In short, Alavi argued that Iran conducts terrorism, undermines its neighbours and props up the Asad regime because it must do so to survive its lack of legitimacy at home.

The foreign policy answer for Western governments wanting to contain Iranian aggression is to hold the regime accountable for its human rights abuses. Alavi referred back to the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mostly supporters of the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), by the decree of Khomeini, and this summer’s revelation of an audio tape wherein the late Ayatollah Montazeri, the former successor to Khomeini, told those senior officials implementing the executions that history would judge them “criminals”.

Ignoring a crime of such a scale has “emboldened” the regime domestically and overseas, Alavi contended. “The UN should form an international tribunal to bring to justice all the decision makers, and perpetrators of the 1988 massacre, who are still in key positions in the Iranian regime,” he wrote. “It is also imperative,” Alavi argued, to impose sanctions because human rights violations, and to condition any economic and political relations with Iran to a complete halt of executions and torture.

http://www.groundreport.com/iran-tehrans-terrorism-can-stopped/