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Iran: Why Did Tehran Risk Carrying Out a Terrorist Act in Europe by Its Diplomat?

On Monday, tensions between Iran & the West continued to escalate as the regime took two distinct measures aimed to blackmail community.

In the summer of 2018, four Iranian terrorist operatives were arrested in Europe as they attempted to carry out a bomb plot. Two of those operatives were caught with 500 grams of the high-explosive TATP, which they were attempting to carry from Belgium into France, where the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) was holding its annual rally for the cause of Iranian democracy. Their handler, the third counselor at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, had reportedly handed off the material and a detonator to them after personally smuggling them into Europe while traveling on a diplomatic passport.

The latter individual, Assadollah Assadi, is not the first Iranian diplomat to be accused of ties to terrorism, but he is the first to actually face charges as a result. Following more than two years of investigation, he and his co-conspirators formally went on trial in late November, and a verdict in their case is now due on Thursday, February 4, 2021. Information about their terror plot has continued to leak to the public throughout the proceedings, and it has provided a better understanding both of the potential impact and of the likely motivating factors. This in turn has presumably given Western policymakers additional food for thought as they consider how to respond to the incident.

Iran’s Terrorist-Diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, Led a Large Espionage & Terrorism Network in EU

Among the recent revelations is the fact that the two would-be bombers, Nasimeh Na’ami and Amir Saadouni, were specifically instructed to place the explosives as close as possible to Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance leader who provided the keynote address at the NCRI’s “Free Iran” rally. This erases any doubt that might have previously existed about how the plot might have affected Western nations.

Throughout the event, Mrs. Rajavi was often in close proximity to high-profile political dignitaries from around the world, including dozens of Americans and Europeans. If the terrorists had fulfilled their main objective, it is virtually certain that some of those lawmakers and foreign policy experts would have been among the collateral damage. Of course, the explosion would have also killed innocent civilians among the crowd of onlookers, which was estimated at around 100,000.

Free Iran 2018 Gathering - 30 June 2018 - Villepinte, Paris

Affidavits from the Assadi trial estimate that the overall death toll would have certainly run into the hundreds, and that an ensuing stampede may have raised that toll to well over 1,000. The terrorists were no doubt aware of the potential impact, as at least one of them had reportedly traveled to the target venue in advance, for reconnaissance.

The prosecutors in Assadi’s case have been unequivocal in their statements describing the principal defendant as someone who was acting in the name of the Iranian regime and upon orders from high in the regime’s leadership. In fact, the plans would only have moved forward with input from both the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.

In the presence of all these details, it is natural to wonder why Iran’s leadership was willing to embrace this course of action, knowing full well that Assadi’s capture would expose the regime to risk of an international incident. To find the answer, it is necessary to look to the circumstances inside Iran before the time when the plot went into motion. While tensions between Tehran and the West had certainly begun to escalate by the summer of 2018, the terror plot was without question the result of months of planning, and thus were part of a response to preexisting conflict between the regime and domestic supporters of the Iranian Resistance.

Maryam Rajavi and the NCRI have long been a major focus of the regime’s wrath, but its obsession with stamping out the Resistance expanded at the beginning of 2018 when the regime found itself rocked by a spontaneous, nationwide uprising which popularized explicit calls for regime change and democratic governance. In January of that year, Iran’s regime Supreme Leader delivered a speech in which he took the unusual step of acknowledging that the unrest had been driven by the organizing efforts of the NCRI’s main constituent group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI-MEK).

“Iran’s Year of Uprising”

That speech effectively undermined decades of propaganda that portrayed the Resistance movement as marginal, cultish, and lacking in genuine support among the Iranian people. Once the uprising exposed the falsity of that narrative, it was virtually impossible for regime authorities to put the genie back in the bottle. By the middle of 2018, it was clear that the only way Tehran could reclaim its former image of strength was by turning its fantasy of a ruined Resistance movement into reality.

After Assadi’s arrest signaled the failure of that effort, activists throughout Iran continued to promote the uprising’s anti-government slogans, culminating in another, larger uprising in November 2019. That movement encompassed nearly 200 cities and towns before being suppressed by institutions like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which opened fire on crowds of protesters and killed an estimated 1,500. But even this failed to bring a conclusive end to the unrest, which flared up again just two months later, in the wake of the IRGC’s missile strike on a commercial airliner over Tehran.

In light of the high political price the regime had to pay for this terrorist act, it stands to reason that the regime was willing to pay this price to destroy or exert a blow to the Iranian resistance and the MEK. This, in itself, is indicative of the significance of Iranian resistance, and the MEK and its existential threat to the regime.

If the EU turns a blind eye to the regime’s terrorism and deals with this case as a trial for rouge individuals, the regime will once again attempt to carry out more terrorist acts in Europe. To prevent this, the international community must make it absolutely clear that Tehran has to pay serious consequences for this act. The accountability for the plot must extend to the Iranian regime and its officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

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