Before Anyone Further Appeases Iran...
15 August 2017By Heshmat Alavi
Forbes, August 16, 2017 - The pro-Iran deal camp is recently making much noise
about how the Trump administration and critics of the pact, known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are making rightful complaints of the
text failing to address Iran's destructive belligerence in the Middle East.
These are valid concerns, considering the fact that even if the deal remains
intact come October's decision by President Donald Trump to find Iran in
compliance or not, the mullahs are hell-bent to continue wreaking havoc and
expanding influence across the region.
The pro-Iran deal camp claim Washington has no evidence to hold Tehran in
violation of the JCPOA terms. Not true.
. Tehran has exceeded its heavy water production cap, necessary for a
plutonium nuclear bomb,
. testing more advanced centrifuges,
. illicitly procuring highly sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile
technology in Germany, according to Berlin's intelligence services,
. surpassing its uranium enrichment cap, another key non-compliance factor
The pro-JCPOA camp also argues this deal has prevented Iran from becoming the
next North Korea. This is partially true and misleads only the uninformed
reader. A deal very similar to the JCPOA, led by the Clinton administration,
was signed with North Korea and ended up in dismal failure. This left the
world with a rogue state now equipped with at least 20 nuclear bombs,
intercontinental ballistic missiles and the technology to miniaturize a
nuclear warhead in its payload.
While the JCPOA was intended to keep Iran away from nuclear weapons, why
shouldn't Washington lead the West in demanding Iran curb its further
belligerence, such as advances in its ballistic missile drive, increasing
executions and atrocious human rights violations, and stirring mayhem in the
Middle East?
Iran must be held responsible for 'its missile launches, support for
terrorism, disregard for human rights, and violations of U.N. Security Council
resolutions,' U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Tuesday.
Speaking of this flashpoint region, legitimate concerns exist over Iran
establishing a "Shiite crescent" stretching from Afghanistan to the
Mediterranean. Important to note is the fact that JCPOA flaws, and the Obama
administration's desperate nature to sign a deal as a foreign policy legacy,
provided Iran a windfall of billions to stoke its support for the Assad regime
in Syria.
"Iran has been helpful in Iraq by fighting the Islamic State," is how The New
York Times describes Tehran's campaign in its western neighbor, failing to
even mention how Iran-backed Shiite militias and death squads have launched
massacres, killing sprees and forced displacements targeting Iraq's Sunnis and
other minorities. While Iraq was a melting pot of peoples of different
backgrounds living intertwined in peace and for centuries, Iran's fueling of
sectarian wars has created a dangerously wide rift of hatred.
Iran's measures in supporting Yemen's Houthis in their illegitimate fight
against an internationally recognized government, funding of the Lebanese
Hezbollah and supporting the Afghan Taliban as an ally against the US add all
the more reason for strong action against Tehran.
In parallel fashion, the pro-appeasement camp continues to seek ties between
Washington and Tehran, similar to the "working relationship" established
between former US top diplomat John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad
Javad Zarif.
Iran apologists are quick to criticize current US Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson for refusing to meet Iranians, while easily brushing aside the
undeniable truth that Tehran usurped its warmed relations with the Obama
administration to concurrently prop up the Assad regime and its massacring of
innocent Syrian women and children, especially with chemical weapons.
Another question Iran apologists have allowed Tehran to go by never answering
is this: Why do the mullahs continuously insist on such a politically and
economically expensive nuclear program while sitting on the world's second
largest natural gas reserve and fourth largest crude oil reserve?
If the mullahs truly sought the better interest of the "Iranian nation," as
they have claimed for the past forty years, why don't they turn off the lights
on their nuclear program and reap in all the incentives and lucrative economic
contracts that will most definitely follow?
And why the sudden regime change-phobia on Iran? Yes, many critics correctly
point out the fact that regime change policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya
have gone south. Yet why do these critics fail to go the distance and
carefully evaluate the main reason behind these failures?
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya lacked any solution and alternative to replace
their ruling states with true democracies. This is not the case with Iran.
The Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a
coalition of numerous dissident groups and individuals, led by its charismatic
President Maryam Rajavi, has a ten-point plan for the future of Iran.
Universal suffrage, pluralism, individual freedoms, abolition of the death
penalty, separation of church state, gender equality, rule of law, commitment
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, peaceful coexistence and a
non-nuclear Iran all meet the modern democracies in the West.
The NCRI, with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) as its
core member, has been gaining serious momentum in the past few months. Senator
John McCain, Chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee met with NCRI
President Rajavi in April. Last month hundreds of international dignitaries
and over 100,000 members of the Iranian Diaspora voiced support for regime
change in Iran in a massive Paris rally.
And as the Trump administration is weighing its comprehensive Iran policy, a
high-profile delegation of US senators recently visited Maryam Rajavi and PMOI/MEK
members in Albania. This visit sends strong signals as Rajavi and the PMOI/MEK
are the legitimate flagbearers of regime change in Tehran.
At such a sensitive timing, Tehran is on its last leg and Iran apologists are
desperately attempting to provide a crutch. This is a highly mistaken
approach.
Washington should lead the West in raising the stakes for Iran. Demands must
be placed before the mullahs to end all its menacing activities, parallel to
the international recognition of the Iranian opposition NCRI to realize regime
change in Tehran.
I am a political/rights activist focusing on Iran & the Middle East. I also
write in Al Arabiya English, and contributed to The Hill, Algemeiner and
Raddington Report. I tweet @HeshmatAlavi
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