{"id":226997,"date":"2020-09-30T10:43:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T09:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=226997"},"modified":"2023-02-01T05:43:02","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T04:43:02","slug":"prosecution-of-iranian-diplomat-should-mark-the-end-of-tehrans-impunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/blog\/op-ed\/prosecution-of-iranian-diplomat-should-mark-the-end-of-tehrans-impunity\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecution of Iranian Diplomat Should Mark the End of Tehran\u2019s Impunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Court\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By: Alejo Vidal-Quadras<\/p>\n

In June 2018, the Iranian regime attempted to attack an international rally as part of a plan to stamp out organized efforts to facilitate regime change and establish a democratic government in place of the theocratic dictatorship. In November 2020, the mastermind of that thwarted terror plot will face prosecution in Belgium for conspiracy to commit terrorist murder. It is vitally important not only that he be held accountable for the incident, but also that his trial serves as a warning to the regime about the future consequences it will face for such political violence.<\/p>\n

Iranian terrorism is a painfully familiar phenomenon, but the 2018 terror plot is unusual in some ways. The defendant in November\u2019s trial will be an erstwhile Iranian diplomat, the Third Counselor of the Iranian embassy in Vienna. It is not at all unusual for this regime’s diplomats to play a role in planning or facilitating Iranian terrorism, but Assadollah Assadi<\/a>\u2019s actions two years ago were especially transparent and hands-on. Apart from recruiting and conveying orders to the operatives tasked with bombing the Iran Freedom rally<\/a> near Paris, Assadi is reported to have personally provided those operatives with 500 grams of the explosive TATP, plus a detonator.<\/p>\n

In the wake of his arrest, European authorities acknowledged that Iranian embassies throughout Europe are virtually swarming with intelligence agents. Assadi\u2019s actions underscore just how much danger results from allowing terrorist diplomats to live and work in European capitals with little monitoring and little consequence for their illicit activities. Any one of them could turn out to be the head of a sleeper cell that is poised to set off explosives or carry out assassinations in the heart of Europe.<\/p>\n

\"Weekly-Signe-up-logo-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is actually a lesson that Western policymakers should have learned a very long time ago. Iranian embassies and consulates have previously been conduits through which Tehran has organized terrorist plots. And not all of them have been thwarted as Assadi\u2019s was. In the 1980s and 90s, Tehran conducted a series of assassinations of opposition activists such as Kazem Rajavi<\/a>, who was the National Council of Resistance of Iran<\/a>\u2019s representative to the United Nations before he was gunned down in traffic near his home in Geneva in 1990. Disgracefully, Tehran faced little real consequence from any of these killings, and thus had little incentive to slow the expansion of its network of terrorist-diplomats.<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, Assadollah Assadi stands to be the only such diplomat to face charges for his role in Iranian terrorism. It helps that his involvement is especially difficult to minimize or explain away. It may help even more that the potential victims of his plot were not limited to Iranian expatriates, as in the case of most of the earlier targeted assassinations. The annual rally organized by the NCRI has come to attract upwards of 100,000 participants each year and while the vast majority are Iranian exiles and their relatives, the lineup of speakers includes numerous political dignitaries, representing multi-partisan delegations from across Europe, the United States, and much of the world.<\/p>\n

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Free Iran 2018 Gathering - 30 June 2018 - Villepinte, Paris<\/div><\/div>
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