{"id":230130,"date":"2020-11-24T19:15:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T19:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=230130"},"modified":"2023-02-01T05:33:16","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T04:33:16","slug":"iran-trial-to-reveal-moral-imperative-political-opportunity-for-confronting-iranian-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/terrorism-a-fundamentalism\/iran-trial-to-reveal-moral-imperative-political-opportunity-for-confronting-iranian-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Trial To Reveal Moral Imperative, Political Opportunity for Confronting Iranian Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Iran-Terrorism-24112020\"<\/p>\n

On Friday, four agents of the Iranian regime will be going on trial in Belgium. But in a sense, it will be the entire Iranian regime that goes on trial. This is because one of the four defendants is a high-ranking diplomat-terrorist, whose role as the mastermind of a 2018 terror plot helped to expose the regime\u2019s habit of using its diplomatic networks for the furtherance of malign objectives.<\/p>\n

That diplomat-terrorist, Assadollah Assadi<\/a>, was serving as the third counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Vienna prior to his arrest in July 2018, following an opposition rally<\/a> that his operatives had attempted to blow up. Apart from coordinating the operation, Assadi personally transported an explosive device into Europe before handing it off in Luxembourg to an Iranian-Belgian couple with instructions to carry it on to its final destination just outside of Paris.<\/p>\n

\"Iranian
Police man speaks to the Iranian diplomat-terrorist Assadolah Assadi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Investigations that traced the chain of custody for that device also concluded that the entire operation had been undertaken with the full knowledge and support of leading regime\u2019s officials, including President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This fact should receive appropriate attention at Friday\u2019s trial in Antwerp, as well as in accompanying media coverage.<\/p>\n

It seems clear that prospective witnesses in the case will have plenty to say on the matter. The head of the Belgian state security service recently assured reporters that the 2018 terror plot \u201cwas not a matter of Assadi\u2019s personal initiative\u201d but instead \u201cwas conceived in the name of Iran and under its leadership.\u201d And this conclusion can easily be applied to a wide range of other terrorist activity carried out by proxies in Tehran\u2019s name, or in line with the regime\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

This was the implication of statements offered the Belgian judiciary in a press conference immediately following Assadi\u2019s arrest. \u201cPractically all employees of Iranian embassies are part of the Iranian Secret Service,\u201d said a spokesperson, thus affirming that Assadi\u2019s dual role as a diplomat and terrorist was by no means unique to him.<\/p>\n

The June 2018 terror plot simply stands apart from others of its kind because the fingerprints of higher authorities are more clearly impressed upon the evidence. This is apparently a testament both to the perceived value of the target in that case, and to the vulnerable situation that the regime found itself in when attempting to confront that target.<\/p>\n

Several months before Assadi and his co-defendants attempted to carry out the bombing, the regime found itself in the midst of a practically unprecedented nationwide uprising.<\/a> Protests began in the final days of 2017 and spread to more than 100 localities by the middle of January 2018. By then, Khamenei had responded to the unrest in a public speech and had taken the unusual step of acknowledging that anti-regime sentiment was being promoted and directed by Iran\u2019s leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI<\/a>), enjoys a substantial footprint both within the Iranian activist community and upon the world stage. Each summer, the NCRI organizes a massive gathering of Iranian expatriates, and it was this \u201cFree Iran\u201d rally that Assadi\u2019s team was targeting in 2018. As such, the casualties from a successful attack would have included thousands of individuals from any number of home countries. And because the prime target of the plot was the opposition leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi<\/a>, it most likely would have killed or wounded several of the visiting political dignitaries who were seated near her during the event.<\/p>\n

Among those dignitaries were European lawmakers with a range of political affiliations, as well as former US Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson, and former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani. The list of potential victims underscores the fact that Tehran was plainly willing to put all of its international relations at risk in order to carry out the attack. And that in turn points to a certain degree of desperation in the regime\u2019s effort to confront the organized Resistance movement that had presented so great a challenge to its hold on power at the beginning of that year.<\/p>\n

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