Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeIran News NowLatest News on Iranian TerrorismTurning a Blind Eye To Iran’s Terrorism in Europe Will Bring More...

Turning a Blind Eye To Iran’s Terrorism in Europe Will Bring More Terrorism To Europe

Iran-EU-terrorism-assadi-13022021

Earlier this month, the Western world achieved a significant milestone in its relations with the Iranian regime when a high-ranking Iranian diplomat was found guilty of plotting terrorism in the heart of Europe. Although many other such figures have come under suspicion in the past and several have been expelled from their diplomatic posts, Assadollah Assadi was the first to actually face prosecution. His trial was arguably a sign of diminishing patience for Iran’s malign activities, but unfortunately it has yet to spark a broader shift in Western policies toward the Iranian regime.

Still, that shift is vitally important, as details of Assadi’s trial make clear. Investigators and prosecutors repeatedly emphasized that the specific plot in question, the attempted bombing of an Iranian expatriate gathering held just outside Paris in June 2018, was not the product of Assadi’s own initiative but had been undertaken on orders from high in the Iranian regime. As part of that plot, Assadi employed three co-conspirators including an Iranian-Belgian couple to whom he personally delivered an explosive device along with instructions to place it as close as possible to the event’s keynote speaker, the Iranian Resistance leader Maryam Rajavi.

In making it clear that Rajavi was the prime target, Assadi effectively confirmed the relationship between the terror plot and the challenges that regime authorities were then facing inside Iran. Several months before the plot was thwarted by European law enforcement, Iranians in more than 100 cities and towns took to the streets in a spontaneous protest against the ruling system.

While that movement was still in full swing, Iran’s regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei begrudgingly acknowledged that the MEK had played a major role in organizing the protests and popularizing their unusually provocative slogans, which explicitly endorsed regime change and the creation of a democratic government like that which Mrs. Rajavi has advocated in her 10-point plan for the country’s future. That plan also endorses the separation of religion from the state and legal safeguards on the rights of women and minorities, and as such it has been recognized by a politically diverse array of Western policymakers.

International support for Maryam Rajavi’s ten-point plan for a democratic Iran

This position was recently reiterated in a resolution co-sponsored by 112 members of the US House of Representatives. The document makes reference to the Assadi case and duly condemns Iran’s well-recognized sponsorship of international terrorism, but it also highlights the prospective role of an organized opposition movement in rooting out that terrorism and putting the Iranian nation on the path toward peaceful relations with the democratic nations of the world.

Specifically, the resolution “recognizes the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.” And it urges the European Union and the rest of the international community to help support that movement by taking their own actions to stop a range of “malign activities” by the ruling theocracy and to “hold Iran accountable for breaching diplomatic privileges.”

Weekly-Signe-up-logo-1

Fortunately, some European lawmakers have already demonstrated their affinity for the position expressed in this resolution, and it is quite possible that their numbers expanded in the midst of the Assadi trial. Before the verdict was even returned, statements were issued by current members of the European Parliament and by former government officials in more than a dozen EU member states urging the same basic course of action as that which was mentioned in the House resolution.

At least one such statement, addressed to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, specifically underlined the connections between Iran’s foreign terrorism and its domestic crackdowns on dissent. According to the statement these two practices together “have been the foundation of Iran’s survival strategy for decades.” Accordingly, it urged the leadership of the European Union to make any future diplomatic or trade ties with the Iran conditional upon demonstrable improvements in both these areas.

In the meantime, that statement added, the EU should vigorously investigate and punish any and all Iranian diplomats, journalists, or other guests of Western nations who might harbor connections to the regime’s terrorist infrastructure. In the wake of Assadi’s conviction, it should be clear that the number of these individuals is considerably higher than many casual observers had assumed. Apart from the three individuals Assadi conspired with in his effort to bomb the 2018 “Free Iran” rally, he had apparently been in touch with hundreds of assets spanning at least 11 European countries, for years prior to his arrest.

There can be little doubt that this network includes other sleeper cells like those which were awoken for the 2018 terrorist plot. And it cannot be taken for granted that Assadi’s removal from the network means the operations of the network itself have been meaningfully interrupted. Unless the regime itself faces consequences for Assadi’s actions, it will surely direct another operative to take his place and to stand ready for the next terrorist plot in Europe.

As much as Tehran’s escalating repression of dissent represents the potential for escalating terrorist activity on Western soil, it also represents opportunities for Western nations to support an opposition movement that is garnering more and more sympathy at home while steadily chipping away at the regime’s political stability. If Western leaders were to ignore this situation, they would be turning their backs not just on their own security interests but also on the prospect of democratic government taking root in the heart of the Middle East.

On one hand, the recent statements from European parliamentarians and US congressmen signify that the situation is widely recognized. But on the other hand, Western governments have shown that this recognition is still not guiding mainstream policy, which remains needlessly obsessed with preserving a deeply flawed nuclear deal and maintaining some semblance of normal relations with a regime that tried to launch an attack on peaceful protesters in France less than three years ago.

Of course, there is still time for this situation to change. And it needs to change, lest the Iranian regime come away from the situation with renewed confidence that it can get away with anything. Although the mullahs’ grip on power is already weakening, it is only becoming more important for them to face coordinated challenges at home and abroad. In absence thereof, they will only lash out more and more aggressively on both fronts, in a desperate final bid to preserve their unpopular, outmoded, and destructive rule.