{"id":239473,"date":"2021-05-10T09:53:22","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T14:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=239473"},"modified":"2023-02-01T04:56:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T03:56:17","slug":"iranian-diplomats-terrorist-conviction-is-secure-but-underlying-issues-remain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/terrorism-a-fundamentalism\/iranian-diplomats-terrorist-conviction-is-secure-but-underlying-issues-remain\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Diplomat\u2019s Terrorist Conviction Is Secure, but Underlying Issues Remain"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_223034\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-223034\" style=\"width: 801px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Asadollah-Assadi-a-diplomat-terrorist-of-the-Iranian-regime-is-on-trial-in-Belgium-facing-terrorism-charges\" class=\"wp-image-223034\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Asadollah-Assadi-a-diplomat-terrorist-of-the-Iranian-regime-is-on-trial-in-Belgium-facing-terrorism-charges.jpg\" alt=\"Asadollah-Assadi-a-diplomat-terrorist-of-the-Iranian-regime-is-on-trial-in-Belgium-facing-terrorism-charges\" width=\"801\" height=\"454\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Asadollah-Assadi-a-diplomat-terrorist-of-the-Iranian-regime-is-on-trial-in-Belgium-facing-terrorism-charges.jpg 690w, https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Asadollah-Assadi-a-diplomat-terrorist-of-the-Iranian-regime-is-on-trial-in-Belgium-facing-terrorism-charges-300x170.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 801px) 100vw, 801px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-223034\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Asadollah Assadi, a diplomat-terrorist of the Iranian regime, is on trial in Belgium facing terrorism charges<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It was reported last week that <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/editorial\/editorial-eu-punitive-action-imperative-after-iran-diplomat-terror-verdict-became-final\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Assadollah Assadi<\/a>, the Iranian diplomat who masterminded a terror plot in the heart of Europe three years ago, would not be pursuing an appeal of his February conviction. Assadi was prosecuted alongside three co-conspirators in a Belgian federal court and received the longest prison sentence of the group, at 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>Since the start of the investigation into Assadi\u2019s activities, he and his handlers in Tehran have maintained that he should have been granted diplomatic immunity on the basis of his position, without regard for the seriousness of the case against him. At no point have they explicitly disputed the details of that case, which include an account of him obtaining high explosives from Iran, smuggling them into Europe on a commercial flight using a diplomatic pouch, and then handing them off two an Iranian-Belgian couple tasked with carrying the bomb to the annual gathering of Iranian expatriates held just outside of Paris by the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/about-ncri\/alternative\/\" rel=\"noopener\">National Council of Resistance of Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Assadi reportedly instructed his co-conspirators to place the device as close as possible to NCRI President-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. Around six months prior to the June 30, 2018 gathering, the Iranian regime\u2019s Supreme Leader <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/english.mojahedin.org\/i\/iran-ali-khamenei-suprem-leader\" rel=\"noopener\">Ali Khamenei<\/a> publicly attributed a then-ongoing nationwide uprising. He specifically alleged that the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK) had \u201cplanned for months\u201d to popularize anti-government slogans and redirect initial protests away from their exclusive economic focus and toward explicit calls for regime change and democratic governance.<\/p>\n<p>Concerns over this growth of influence by the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/english.mojahedin.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\">MEK<\/a> and NCRI apparently fueled a general increase in terrorist activity targeting the coalition\u2019s activists and affiliates outside of Iran. The Paris terror plot was preceded in March 2018 by the attempted deployment of a truck bomb at the New Year gathering of MEK in Albania. Furthermore, in August of that same year, two Iranian nationals were indicted in the United States for conducting surveillance on MEK activists and other critics of the Iranian regime, apparently as a precursor to additional terrorist plots or assassination attempts.<\/p>\n<p>Although each of these incidents led either to prosecution or to the expulsion of Iranian diplomats, they collectively underscore the fact that there is a far-reaching threat of Iranian state-sponsored terrorism which has not been addressed by Assadi\u2019s conviction alone. Of course, that conviction is a significant step in the right direction, especially considering that Assadi was the first Iranian official to so much as face formal charges in Europe over his involvement in terrorist activity. But his trial also established that he was by no means alone in maintaining that involvement. Thus, much work remains to be done in order to uproot the terrorist networks that overlap with Iran\u2019s diplomatic missions.<\/p>\n<p>More than 220 members of the US House of Representatives acknowledged the urgency of this situation in a resolution that was recently introduced to the legislative body. H. Res. 118 \u201ccalls on relevant United States Government agencies to work with European allies\u2026 to hold Iran accountable for breaching diplomatic privileges, and to call on nations to prevent the malign activities of the Iranian regime\u2019s diplomatic missions, with the goal of closing them down.\u201d It also quotes a State Department official as saying in the immediate aftermath of Assadi\u2019s arrest that \u201cIran uses embassies as cover to plot terrorist attacks.\u201d Several other Western officials acknowledged this same fact at the time, and yet little apparent effort has been made to halt this practice, or even to publicly highlight Assadi\u2019s role in it.<\/p>\n<p>By declining to appeal, Assadi has effectively acknowledged that role, and it arguably does not much matter anymore whether there is widespread international awareness of his case. But the same cannot be said for international awareness of the underlying phenomenon of Iranian terrorism being channeled through embassies and other foreign institutions.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent statement, members of the European Parliament from several countries described the Assadi case as leaving \u201cno doubt about the Iranian regime\u2019s terrorist objectives and the use of its embassies and diplomats in this regard.\u201d It went on to suggest that the EU respond to this and other malign activities by moving to \u201ccomprehensively reassess its policy on Iran.\u201d More specifically, it warned of likely infiltration by Iranian operatives in the guise of \u201cdiplomats, journalists or businessmen,\u201d and it urged relevant authorities to designate the institutions behind that infiltration \u2013 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security \u2013 as terrorist entities.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/stats.sender.net\/forms\/dGYVLa\/view\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Weekly-Signe-up-logo-1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-219239 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Weekly-Signe-up-logo-1.png\" alt=\"Weekly-Signe-up-logo-1\" width=\"250\" height=\"83\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThis would indeed be an appropriate next step following the conclusion of Assadi\u2019s case. But it must also be recognized as just another step toward a much larger goal, namely holding the entire Iranian regime accountable for its terrorist plots. In convicting Assadi, the Belgian court made it absolutely clear that he was acting at the behest of authorities high within the Iranian regime, and the NCRI has clarified that such decisions are invariably undertaken by the Supreme National Security Council, with input from the supreme leader, the president, and other leading officials.<\/p>\n<p>With this in mind, the NCRI said in a recent statement that any notion of a lack of awareness by such officials \u201chas no purpose other than to cover up state-sponsored terrorism and help the regime evade the consequences of these major crimes.\u201d Thus, the issues underlying Assadi\u2019s case can never be resolved until the regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and other leading figures in the Iranian regime are all held accountable for recent terrorist attacks and historical crimes, ideally via prosecution at the International Criminal Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was reported last week that Assadollah Assadi, the Iranian diplomat who masterminded a terror plot in the heart of Europe three years ago, would not be pursuing an appeal [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":223034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,19],"tags":[129,197,273,282,287],"class_list":{"0":"post-239473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-terrorism-a-fundamentalism","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-mek-iran","11":"tag-assadollah-assadi","12":"tag-assadollah-assadi-trial","13":"tag-iran-terrorism"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Iranian Diplomat\u2019s Terrorist Conviction Is Secure, but 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