Sunday, 1st June 2008
UN Sanctions Failing in Iran
The Appeal Court rejected the UK government's case and demanded the PMOI be removed from the UK terrorist list. Further leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.
Four years ago, Paulo Casaca MEP, a Portuguese Socialist, and I set up the Friends of a Free Iran Inter-group in the European Parliament. Among its goals were to support the restoration of democracy, rule of law, human rights, women's rights, and the abolition of the death penalty and nuclear weapons in Iran. We quickly discovered that the main opposition group, backing exactly those objectives, with a manifesto under which I would be proud to stand for election, was the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Since then, we have backed the PMOI to realise those objectives. We have fought a campaign across Europe, the United States, and many other countries, to put the arguments for removing the PMOI from Western terror lists, where they have been placed at the behest of the Mullahs' regime.
Paulo Casaca and other colleagues have on several occasions also travelled to Iraq to visit Camp Ashraf where 3,500 of the brave and resourceful key frontline PMOI members are refugees under constant threat of attack or eviction.
We have met many obstacles during our campaign. Our several invitations to Mrs. Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), to come to the European Parliament, faced opposition at the highest level. Last year when I invited her to address the EPP-ED group, of which I am Vice-President, we had phone calls from Tehran where Javier Solana was at that point meeting with the Mullahs to try to persuade them to give up their nuclear enrichment programme. He telephoned Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who then telephoned the President of our Group, Hans-Gert Poettering, to insist that we withdraw the invitation. Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel of Austria telephoned another of our Group Vice Presidents with the same request. The intense pressure was unbelievable. But we insisted that as freely elected democratic politicians it was up to us, and not Tehran’s Mullahs, to decide whom we should meet. The meeting with Mrs. Rajavi was a success.
We have also faced vilification campaigns from Iranian intelligence. Spurious press articles accuse us and other PMOI supporters of being “friends of terrorists”. Obscure Iranian intelligence-funded advertisements, naming the PMOI as a terrorist organisation, appear in parliamentary magazines and news journals. Recognizing the PMOI as the key threat to their odious stranglehold on Iran, the Mullahs are terrified of them.
While Europe has pursued its policy of appeasing the Mullahs, President Ahmadinejad has continued his brutal strategy of terror and oppression. Despite pleas from the West, there have been even more executions, amputations, stonings, and now a new innovation in brutality, where people are executed by being thrown off cliffs.
While President Ahmadinejad boasts about 6,000 centrifuges ready to work in cascade, the West is reassured about the peaceful nature of the programme to generate electricity. But, where are the power stations? There is only one at Bushehr, to which the Russians supply fuel. So, why do we foolishly even consider the notion of a peaceful programme?
The PMOI and their courageous supporters within Iran were the first to reveal the Mullahs’ nuclear programme, risking their lives in the process. Among their most recent revelations were the secret nuclear control and command centre in Lavizan working on a nuclear generator and triggers for an atomic bomb, and Khojir site, southeast of Tehran, where nuclear warheads are being produced. The scientists’ names, the exact technology and locations of the sites were also exposed. After seeing this information, all we resort to are pathetic warnings and weak UN sanctions against Iran.
I recently received detailed information from the Transatlantic Institute proving that major European companies are working with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) inside Iran. I then asked the PMOI to verify this information from their sources within Iran.
Last week they delivered the answer to me; a major Italian company is supplying dual-use equipment, while a leading German company is supplying a mass of sophisticated tunnelling machinery without which the nuclear bunkers could not be built in Iran. Pictures given to me clearly show the emblems of IRGC, which is on the U.S. list of nuclear proliferators, above the tunnels.
Both of these corporations are working with the IRGC's Khatam military engineering complex, which is on the UN sanctions list, and thus violating UNSC sanctions. A recent report even named a British businessman supplying missile guidance systems to the Iranian regime.
Aside from this, virtually every major terrorist outrage in the last decade has had the Mullahs’ fingerprints on it. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map. So, why do we continue appeasing the foremost state sponsor of terrorism? Why have we not severed our diplomatic relations with them, and like the U.S., placed the IRGC and its Qods Force on the EU terror lists? The answer is simple. MONEY!
Too many vested interests in Europe are filling their pockets with lucrative contracts with Iran and they wish to keep it going even to the point of supplying nuclear technology. The only people who are prepared to stand up and expose this outrage are the PMOI. But, at the direct request of the Mullahs we placed the PMOI on our terror lists, thus effectively gagging them, tying their hands, freezing all their assets and stopping them from lobbying in the corridors of power, where they could bring effective opposition to bear on this teetering regime in Tehran. Appeasing the Iranian regime does not work.
This is a regime which is teetering on the brink of extinction but it needs a push to topple it and that push can only come from the main opposition party under the inspired leadership of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. When France takes over the rotating presidency of Europe on the 1st of July, I certainly hope that President Sarkozy will continue to pursue his tough line against the nuclear programme in Iran. But it is no use talking tough unless he backs it up with action, and the way to send the Mullahs the most profound signal that we mean business in Europe is to take the PMOI off the EU terror list and start backing them as the only organisation capable of restoring democracy to that beleaguered nation.
