This crisis has led them to do what they do best: attack the Iranian people. Iran Human Rights Monitor reported an increase in executions, repression, and human rights abuse during October, with at least 22 executions, including political prisoners and juvenile offenders, as well as arbitrary murders, deaths in custody, inhuman treatment, cruel punishments, appalling prison conditions and the continued persecution of religious minorities.
This is not something new, but rather has been going on since the start of the Regime. However, we are now living in a time when the appeasement of the Iranian Regime is starting to end and the international community, led by the US, is starting to exert pressure on the mullahs to reform and act “like a normal country”.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a normal state. Normal states do not attack embassies and military installations in peacetime; fuel terrorist proxies and militias; serve as a sanctuary for terrorists; call for the destruction of Israel and threaten other countries; aid brutal dictators such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad; proliferate missile technology to dangerous proxies; conduct covert assassinations in other countries; and hold hostage citizens of foreign nations. Normal states do not support terrorism within their armed forces, as Iran has done with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force. Normal states do not abuse the international financial system and use commercial industry to fund and support terrorism. Normal states do not squander their own natural resources. Normal states do not violently suppress legitimate protests, jail their own citizens or those of other countries on specious crimes, engage in torture, and impose severe restrictions on basic freedoms.”
Everything in that statement is true: normal states do not behave as Iran does. Even in its desperation to cling onto power, the Regime exhibits the abnormal behaviour of repressing its citizens and using cyber warfare against the rest of the world. One of their key targets is the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the main democratic opposition movement.
The Regime spreads fake news about the Resistance, even wrongly labelling them as terrorists, in order to make them less sympathetic to the West, so that the Regime can launch terrorist attacks against them in Western nations – as it has tried four times this year – with impunity.
In March, they tried to attack the MEK at their refuge in Albania, during Iranian New Year celebrations.
In June, the Regime tried to bomb an NCRI rally in Paris, which was attended by hundreds of foreign dignitaries, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. This resulted in the arrests of Assadollah Assadi, a diplomat from the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, two Iranians living in Belgium, and one other accomplice in France.
In August, two Iranians were arrested in the US for spying on the MEK. While in October, one Iranian agent was arrested for plotting to kill an anti-regime activist in Denmark.
Struan Stevenson, the coordinator of Campaign for Iran Change and a former MEP for Scotland, wrote: “Despite such outrages, there are still appeasers in Western political circles who are prepared to close their eyes to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s human rights abuse, aggressive military expansionism, sponsorship of terrorism and cyber warfare. They believe that “constructive dialogue” with one of the world’s most evil regimes is preferable to taking a firm line and demanding that Iran behaves like, in the words of Pompeo, “a normal state.” The political appeasers have their willing media cohorts, who naively lap up every shred of misinformation about the Iranian opposition and every iota of propaganda about the regime.”
