Time for Accountability for the Iranian Regime’s Leaders

Hossein Abedini, Member of
Parliament in exile of Iranian Resistance

Huffington Post, 13 Nov 2012 - The death under torture of Iranian blogger and political prisoner, Sattar Beheshti, 35, has sparked international condemnation but not nearly enough has been done to pressure the regime from carrying out further such barbaric acts.

Mr Beheshti was arrested only eight days before his death. The agents of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) raided his home on October 30 under the name of Internet Control Police. They arrested him without specifying any charges and took him to an undisclosed location.
The charge against Mr Beheshti, who was also detained during the student uprising of 1999 in Tehran, is not a secret. He was one of the millions who dream about a free and democratic Iran. And they see the religious fascism as the true obstacle to realising this dream.
Unfortunately, Mr Beheshti will not be the last victim of the regime’s brutality.
On November 8, five prisoners were hanged in the city of Shiraz. One day earlier fifteen prisoners were hanged in the cities of Tehran, Shiraz, and Zarand.
Since October 22, six mass executions have been carried out. Thirteen prisoners were executed in Gohardasht Prison on October 22 and 23, three in Ghazvin on October 24, and eight in Evin Prison on October 31.
The number of executions during the past three weeks is at least 45. At least 383 individuals have been executed, many in public, since the beginning of 2012. In another alarming development the regime is trying to speed up the execution of 1,000 prisoners on death row by setting up a death panel in Gohardasht Prison.
These statistics are based on the regime’s own public announcements. The real number is far greater.
Many political prisoners are executed under the bogus guise of drug dealers.
In fact the growing domestic repression is a déjà-vu. During the three first years following the 1979 revolution, Khomeini implemented his backward vision of the Absolute Rule of the Clergy using a savage crackdown against peaceful popular dissent by organised political parties with grassroots support.
He wanted to silence the voices of freedom and eliminate the advocates of popular rule and the rule of law. Three decades after the mullahs consolidate power in Iran the mass executions, mistreatment and torture of political prisoners until death have not stopped for even one day. The result is the killing of 120,000 political prisoners and the murder of dissidents inside and outside the country.
Today, the regime is faced with harsh sanctions and economic collapse amid an intensifying internal power struggle.
But the religious fascism is convinced that the only threat to its reign of terror comes from the Iranian people and organised resistance. And so it resorts to increased repression and spread of mass executions at a time when it is most weak.
It hopes to prevent a re-emergence of the nationwide popular uprisings with chants of ‘down with the dictator after the sham 2009 election.
Today, the regime’s systematic violation of human rights has fallen in the shadows as the international community tries to pressure the regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
That should change; it is time for accountability for the leaders of the Iranian regime and all those individuals responsible for torture and executions in Iran.
The UK, the European Union and the United States must raise the case of the Iranian regime’s systematic human rights violations at the UN Security Council and demand comprehensive sanctions and prosecution of the regime’s leaders for crimes against humanity.
The Iranian people will not stay silent and will continue their protests even in the face of growing executions. The question is whether the international community will find the political resolve to follow their lead.

Commentary: Will Obama, Romney meet the Commander-in-Chief test?

Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan 
Special to McClatchy Newspapers

Kansascity.com, 22 Oct 2012 -Monday’s presidential debate is a chance for the candidates to meet the commander-in-chief threshold and address foreign policy matters before an expected audience of more than 60 million viewers in advance of the Nov. 6 election.
Middle East issues are likely to be of particular concern and immediate problems in Iran, Iraq, and Syria will take center stage. The temptation will be to address the challenges in each country separately. In fact they are inextricably intertwined.
The nuclear threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran leads some to think that it will be the most difficult to solve. It may be the easiest. And solving the Iran problem has significant implications for peace and stability in Iraq, Syria, and the Middle East more broadly.
Tehran’s clerical rulers are increasingly on shaky ground with an angry and restless population. With their currency in free-fall and a domestic economy hampered by international sanctions imposed to curtail uranium enrichment to weapons grade levels, many inside the country are asking whether there isn’t a better way.
The realization that there is a viable political alternative in the Iranian opposition has only increased calls for democratic change.
But as Iran’s internal woes have heightened, the regime has dug in by closing ranks with Shiite officials in Baghdad and expanding their violent arc of influence to include Damascus.
Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki maintains a strong grip on his fledgling country but the emerging realization that he is a puppet of the Iranian regime has diminished his stature on the world stage and led to criticism of his continued leadership by U.S. lawmakers.
Positive relations with Tehran have also made al-Assad’s twenty-month crackdown of domestic protest in Syria possible. Iranian shipments of weapons, munitions, IRGC officers, and tools for monitoring domestic dissent have facilitated Assad’s brutality, led to the displacement of more than one hundred thousand people, and resulted in more than thirty thousand causalities.
Increasingly aggressive denunciations of the U.S. and Israel have also become a means of distracting attention from Tehran’s mounting domestic woes.
The candidates can demonstrate facility with contemporary Middle East issues by indicating that their administration will support regime change in Iran. Such change is the only viable means of addressing problems in Iran, Iraq, and Syria in a sustainable way and realizing U.S. and Israeli security interests.
The recent removal of the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) from the State Department’s terror roster was a preliminary acknowledgement that Iran’s aggression must be checked.
The group is an integral component of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of opposition organizations that reject clerical rule and stand for democratic change. No coalition is more capable of exacerbating Tehran’s current troubles and promoting grassroots change from within.
The de-listing of the groups signaled the world that the Clinton-era policy of political engagement designed to appease the regime through concessions had come to end and that all options would be considered to manage the Iran threat.
On the heels of this diplomatic shift, however, more must be done to support the democratic cause in Iran and harness the opposition’s current momentum in support of U.S. security objectives.
Here’s what the candidates need to know about the Iranian opposition group:
• PMOI/MEK’s removal from the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list was an acknowledgement that the group failed to meet the statutory criteria necessary for the designation. It was also an illustration of the bi-partisan consensus that the group’s resistance represented a useful internal check on the regime’s regional influence and the best hopes for a more peaceful and stable Iran.
• No opposition organization stokes the regime’s fears more than PMOI/MEK and U.S. support for the group does little to disabuse Tehran’s anxieties. In this regard, the U.S. embrace of the group provides a source of leverage to force the regime to comply with international obligations.
• Academics that have studied the group have long known that, vis-à-vis other opposition movements in the Middle East, including those that have received recent U.S. support, no group is more capable engendering broad worldwide confidence than PMOI/MEK. Neither does any other opposition group have such a vast and intricate network inside Iran.
• The group has been a valuable source of intelligence on Iran’s emerging nuclear weapons program and their new-found legitimacy is likely to reveal even more information that is useful to the west.
• A 2006 study carried out by the Iran Policy Committee found that the group’s positions were consistent with democratic principles. That the group stands for a non-nuclear Iran that upholds human rights, gender equality, separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and positive relations with regional neighbors and the west provides further justification for the group’s embrace.
The candidates can meet Monday’s commander-in-chief test by demonstrating that they are committed to preventing Iran’s nuclear pursuits by further weakening the regime internally and rejecting the false choice of military confrontation or prolonged political engagement with Iran.
By calling for regime change in Tehran from within and linking broader security issues in the Middle East with the Islamic Republic’s current regime, the candidates can demonstrate leadership, a belief in peace through strength, and a willingness to support those who seek freedom and human rights.

About the writer:
Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the Director of the Negotiation and Conflict Management graduate program in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. The opinions expressed are his own. He can be reached by email at isheehan@ubalt.edu. <mailto:isheehan@ubalt.edu>

The Iranian Rial bonfire -English Edition

By Tariq Alhomayed

The ongoing collapse of the Iranian Rial is yet to signal the eruption of what is to come in Iran, despite what some have alleged, but it does raise several questions about the reality of the Iranian political system, both internally and externally, and especially the extent to which the Rial bonfire affects the Iranian central nervous system (merchants and citizens) and Iranian interests abroad (agents of Tehran).
Of course, as expected, the Iranian regime will go to any length to stop the collapse of its currency, and thus thwart the opportunity for any internal political tremors, but this poses several questions, as I mentioned before, about Iran’s ability to deal with what’s coming to it. Will Iran continue to support the doomed regime of the tyrant of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad? It has been revealed that Tehran has provided nearly US$ 10 billion to al-Assad in terms of finance, equipment and even personnel. Hezbollah, a party that is funded by Iran, has also provided its fighters to support al-Assad, so can Tehran continue this funding in spite of the internal discontent, which poses a genuine risk to the political system there? Or will the current situation prompt Tehran to wonder – not necessarily rationally but pragmatically – why it should rush to finance a regime that will inevitably fall in Syria, especially at a time when Iranian internal conditions pose such a serious danger?
The other threat to Iran today is venturing into the “red zone” [with regards to its nuclear program], as illustrated by the Israeli Prime Minister, who garnered strong public opinion on the back of his speech to the UN General Assembly. Is Iran capable of facing a danger of such magnitude while its internal situation is unstable, and possibly due to explode, especially with the ongoing economic sanctions and subsequent collapse of the Iranian currency?
The story here is not about predicting the future or wishful thinking; it is about trying to figure out what Tehran is thinking these days amidst these sensitive circumstances that are undoubtedly of its own making. After all, it was only natural that prolonged tampering in the region and pursuing adventures outside Iranian territory would end up impacting upon Iran’s internal situation. As I mentioned before, the Syrian situation itself has transformed into a significant drain on Iran, economically and politically. In terms of the political drain, the simplest example is the volume of information that is now being leaked about General Qasem Soleimani’s meetings with some Iraqi leaders, specifically the Kurds. These leaks clearly show that some have begun to turn to the media, and specifically the Western media, to embarrass Iran and expose its blatant interference in Syria. Information has even begun to circulate about the pressures being faced by Qasem Soleimani himself in Iran, due to his failure to accomplish anything concrete in defense of al-Assad after 19 months!
Therefore, it is not my intention here to say that Iran has changed its stance, but rather to say: Is Iran capable of continuing its current stances, especially with regards to Syria? Is Tehran also able to emerge from the bottleneck of the “red zone” predicament that Netanyahu put forward to the UN, given its unstable internal situation? We must find an answer to these questions because this issue will entail much, at all levels, in the coming days.

(There is a Farsi translation of this story available here.)

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