![\"IRGC\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/IRGC.jpg\" "\\"IRGC\\"")
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Last year, a Belgian court issued a 20-year prison sentence for Assadollah Assadi, the Iranian diplomat at the head of a failed plot to bomb the French convention center where the National Council of Resistance of Iran was holding its 2018 \u201cFree Iran World Summit<\/a>\u201d. Serious critics of the Iranian regime, many of whom were in attendance at that event, were hopeful that Assadi\u2019s conviction would lead to other Western nations demanding accountability from his handlers in Tehran.<\/p>\n On July 14, a former Iranian prison official named Hamid Noury was handed a life sentence by a Swedish court after being tried on the basis of universal jurisdiction, for his role in the massacre of 30,000 Iranian political prisoners during the summer of 1988. This might have prompted a similar surge in hopes for high-level accountability, if not for the fact that it was closely followed by the Belgian government undercutting its own court\u2019s decision and approving a treaty that is clearly intended to set the stage for Assadi\u2019s release<\/a> in a prisoner swap.<\/p>\n Now, many Iranian activists are understandably worried that the lack of follow-through, in that case, will become a model for others. They are also worried that such concessions will further reinforce Tehran\u2019s already outsized sense of impunity in matters related to terrorism and human rights. In fact, an Iranian media outlet that is run by the regime\u2019s Revolutionary Guard Corps provided strong evidence that the regime had already been emboldened to accelerate its malign activities, on the expectation that it will face few consequences on the world stage.<\/p>\n On July 27, Fars News<\/a> Agency published an article explicitly advocating for military strikes on an Iranian expatriate community in Albania. The article boasted of \u201cIran’s capacity for offensive drones and ballistic missiles to hit the MKO headquarters in Albania,\u201d and argued that there is \u201cno legal prohibition\u201d against a strike on the pro-democracy opposition group, the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization<\/a> of Iran (PMOI, or MEK).<\/p>\n Iran state-aligned news outlet suggests military strike on resistance group on foreign soil https:\/\/t.co\/DOetwCG6MS<\/a><\/p>\n — Fox News (@FoxNews) July 31, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n