UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has warned about Iran’s ‘increasing willingness to contemplate’ terrorism around the world. He cited an attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, plus alleged involvement in recent attacks in New Delhi, Georgia and Bangkok.
Increasing willingness to contemplate – is that what they call it nowadays?
What about all the opponents assassinated over all these years whilst they went about their business as usual. Any serious opponent of the regime will have stories to tell you – from phone calls we have received threatening us with death to our loved ones being interrogated, threatened and imprisoned in Iran due to our activities as a way of exerting pressure.
The well known cases of assassinations abroad are that of Shahpour Bakhtiar in Paris and the Mykonos four in Greece where a German court found the regime directly responsible for the murders. But there have dozens more. Most will not know of the assassinations of Gholam Keshavarz in Cyprus or Fereydoun Farokhzad in Germany because of the cosy relationship western governments have had with Iran. And it continues to this day.
In 2010, Daryush Shokof was abducted in Germany and beaten and threatened for 13 days by the regime’s agents. Of course nothing was done.
That same year, Babak Shadidi, a member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, confessed and thereby foiled an assassination attempt on my party’s leadership. Again nothing was done.
And just this month, there were reports in the Iranian press that the regime had put together a new list of assassinations. But that is not of concern to William Hague.
And even now, though they are pressuring the regime over the nuclear issue (mainly by threatening the Iranian population with war and via devastating economic sanctions), these governments still continue to flirt with the regime.
I read today in the Evening Standard that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is being sued for banning Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran or the National Council of Resistance, from entering Britain because it might upset the regime and damage efforts to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons!
Always ready and willing to appease the regime at the opposition’s expense [and whilst the PMOI is regressive it is still an opposition force].
Honestly, the appeasement never ends.
And meanwhile opponents abroad continue to face threats of assassination and people in Iran continue to be slaughtered…
The only way this will end well is not via military threats, war or economic sanctions but via a people’s revolution that will overthrow the regime. If these governments stop appeasing the regime and boycott it politically, the people of Iran will do the rest.
“The only way this will end well is not via military threats, war or economic sanctions but via a people’s revolution that will overthrow the regime. If these governments stop appeasing the regime and boycott it politically, the people of Iran will do the rest.”
TTL, A Temporary or Permanent Location
mkocult.blogspot
By M. Nelson
February 23, 2012
With the relocation of about 400 residents of Camp New Iraq, formerly Camp Ashraf, to a new transit center, Temporary Transit Location TTL, near the Baghdad’s airport, the United Nations has welcomed the move calling it “the first step towards a better future” for the transferred residents. But it seems that the relocation does not follow smoothly on the agreed path. For humanitarian reasons and to end the presence of MKO’s members in Iraq in a peaceful way, the Iraqi government agreed to extend the decided deadline 0f their expulsion, in line with the memorandum of understanding signed in December by the UN and the Iraqi Government. Although the relocation of the residents to TTL imposes heavy costs on the Iraqi government, but it demonstrates Iraq’s good will to resolve the situation facing the residents of Camp New Iraq.
As the name of the new location denotes, Temporary Transit Location TTL, it is a temporary facility to facilitate the process of residents’ departure to third countries. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR has announced that it will immediately start the process of verification and refugee status determinations, a key step in preparing the submissions of eligible candidates for resettlement in third countries.
Then, TTL is a center for:
– Temporary settlement of the relocated residents,
– To recognize the residents’ individual identity,
– To determine and verify the residents’ former refugee status in other countries
– To determine the residents’ future of returning to Iran or applying asylum in a third country,
– Preparing legal process of applying for asylum seekers,
As stated in MoU signed by Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Martin Kobler and National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Iraq, Faleh Fayad, the Iraqi government will facilitate relocation of the residents of Camp New Iraq to TTL where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will start a process of refugee status determination of residents individually and regardless of their organizational rank as a necessary step for their resettlement in a third country.
In fact, TTL is not a permanent place of host and stay as some may presume. For sure, the residents’ cooperation with the Iraqi authorities and representatives of UNHCR to complete the relocation and process of refugee status without delay guarantees the human rights, safety and welfare of all residents. Of course, any disapproval and protestation by MKO that might end in prolongation of stay in TTL not only satirizes the meaning of the phrase itself but is also a different aspect of a method of sophistry utilized by the group; to turn TTL into another permanent camp.
There is something that I think makes a lot of nations unwilling to challenge Iran.
Oil.
Without it, Iran would not be much of an international player.
You really think that’s a good idea? The regime has guns, tanks, jets, helicopters and bunch of other deadly toys. What do the people have?
We’ve seen and are still seeing what the regime in Syria is willing to afflict upon it’s own people in order to maintain power. How would Iran be any different?
The people “rising up” in protest, peaceful or not, will only result in something similar to Syrian situation increased by an order of magnitude. Besides, they already tried it in 2009 and the result was grim.
The people aren’t going to do a damn thing because they would rather live.
I don’t know a lot about the most of the assassinations you mentioned, but the one related to the Saudi ambassador really looks like a hoax.
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/12/the_very_scary_iranian_terror_plot/
I’m not fan of the Iranian regime, but as an American I feel it’s my responsibility to focus first on the crimes of my own government because those are the ones I can change. Obviously the US is assassinating people all over the world, particularly in Pakistan, including US citizens that are entitled to a trial before punishment. Iranians abducting and beating people is of course awful, but my government does precisely the same. My government has beaten and tortured at least 100 to death according to Human Rights Watch. My government continues to torture. My government supports Israel even though they are funding a group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization (the MEK) as they operate within Iran killing nuclear scientists. These are civilians. Iran has a legal right to develop nuclear energy since they signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and their enrichment occurs under IAEA supervision. The Iranian regime I’m sure has plenty of defects, but Americans need to look at the beam in their own eye before objecting to the spec in their neighbor’s eye.
There’s hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi’s that are the result of an illegal invasion based on lies. Americans need to clean their own house and then it makes sense to talk about others.
appeasement of Iran? Oh, for heaven’s sake. What about massive sanctions, constant threats of attack, constant demands for the abandonment of the nuclear program, on what planet does this constitute “appeasement”?
That is all temporary. They have always been the best of friends and the nuclear issue is a kink in their love affair.
A kink which has resulted in several dead Iranian nuclear scientists.
To their oppression of Iranians, we might add their support of the Assad regime in Syria, and the support of terrorist organization like Hizbollah and Hamas (although the Hamas folks are becoming somewhat wary about getting too close to Iran).
So how is this accomplished ? What does a political boycott entail ?
What do western governments have to do and stop doing to make this happen ?
Do they kick out Iranian diplomats and shut down the embassies ?
Do they kick Iran out of the UN ?
Do they seize extra national Iranian assets ?
Do they officially recognize Iranian resistance movement(s), assuming that there is a such a movement with sufficient credentials to be recognized ?
It sounds we would still trade with Iran, and since their major export is oil it means we buy their oil, how does this happen in the context of a political boycott ?
Political boycotts and diplomatic isolation mean shutting down embassies, kicking the regime out of the UN, ILO and so on and freezing accounts associated with the regime’s leadership and its machinery of suppression. But general economic sanctions are disastrous. Do you remember in Iraq how they caused the death of around 5,000 children a month? Right now when any of us speak to relatives in Iran, they are so worried about food and their inability now to buy basics. Costs have become ridiculously high meaning that many families can no longer afford food items. Given that there is already so much poverty in Iran and pressure on the people, this is targetting them further rather than the regime.