Iran: 40 Years After Theocrats Usurped Power

By Dowlat Nowrouzi, NCRI Representative in the UK

Over the past four decades, countless articles, books, analysis and reports, have been written about the nature of the clerical regime ruling Iran since it usurped the power after the anti-Shahs’ dictatorship revolution in 1979. For many, the question of why a corrupt, religious fascist regime still holds power is a myth. Let us have a glimpse of the realities of Iran today.

What we are witnessing today is a natural progression and cultivation of forty years of struggle for fundamental rights, freedom and democracy. The regime faces unprecedented crises, internal and external. Despite large scale suppression, 2018 marked a new era in the people’s struggle against the regime by continued uprisings and protests totaling to more than 10,000 protest movements in more than 300 cities across the country. Unforgettable scenes of brave protesters, especially women and youth, chanting “Down with Khamenei, down with Rouhani” and “Reformer, hardliner, the game is now over”, coupled with hundreds of acts by organized resistance units including burning massive portraits of regime leaders in main highways and busy streets, turned another golden page in Iran’s contemporary history, that undoubtedly will lead to a free Iran very soon.

Just like all authoritarian regimes, the mullahs try to first blame the problems they created to outsiders, and then try to export their crises to beyond their borders by resorting to methods they are both good at, and that have worked for them in the past, namely warmongering in the region, meddling in the affairs of other countries and export of terrorism across the globe. Interestingly, these are the main enablers of the regime to stay in power, under the shadow of a misguided policy of appeasement.

The economic catastrophe that the regime created for the Iranian people is well rooted in the Khomeini’s doctrine that “Economy is for donkeys”. In other words, the pure existence of the clerical regime, with a backward thinking ideology that ignores the basic necessities of the people, has brought the state of economy to a stalemate that nowadays everybody, including top regime officials, moan about more than 50% unemployment in some cities, living below the poverty line for more than 80% of the population, complete destruction of factories and production units, and unprecedented economic corruption at the highest levels.

Obviously, this economic disaster cannot be fixed by those who have created it in the first place. The very same rulers who have the blood of 120,000 Iranians on their hands, including the execution of 30,000 MEK / PMOI political prisoners in 1988 that according to many experts, is the largest mass killing of political prisoners after the World War II, have not shied away to make genocidal threats to other countries, as well as direct military support for terrorist and paramilitary groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and others, while their own people suffer economically.

The mullahs’ regime is a “clear and present” danger to its own citizens, to the countries of the region and to the world. One should look no further than the regime’s own admission of deception in the nuclear talks, terrorist plot against the largest gathering of Iranians in Paris in support of the Alternative NCRI President-elect, Maryam Rajavi & MEK in June 2018, terrorist acts in other European countries, and being caught red handed in spying on Iranian resistance in the US and all over the world.

Once, Rafsanjani, who had enormous role in maintain the regime, openly declared in a Friday prayer that “we know how to deal with the West. If … we get a Briton, a French, an American … hostage, they will bow down to our demands.” The West did exactly that at the time. The Iranian Resistance has always warned that appeasing the regime, under whatever pretext, will only embolden it to expand its terrorist reach that eventually victimize Europeans. What transpired in 2018, including foiled terrorist plots on European soil and employing the network of “friendly journalists” to pave the ground for terrorist acts, proved once again that the time for tolerating such behaviour is up.
During 2018, the Iranian people showed courageously that they will not settle for anything but the regime change. It appears the appeasement policy has equally proved futile to those who once were advocating it. As opposed to many likewise scenarios, where in the absence of an organized democratic opposition, the West was left to accept the status quo, the powerful presence of democratic opposition of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), with a well established platform that enjoys the support of the vast majority of the Iranian people as well as thousands of politicians and parliamentarians in democratic countries, paints a clear roadmap of the future for Iran. Inter alia, the 10-point plan of NCRI President elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, calls for a republic based on the separation of religion and state, gender equality, free market economy and a non-nuclear Iran.

The international community needs to recognize the right of the Iranian people to overthrow their unelected religious regime by their own resistance. The Iranian people want nothing more than abandonment of the failed policy of appeasing the torturers and usurpers of their assets and capitals and recognition of their rights. The Warsaw Conference on February 13 and 14 could be successful just by doing that.

Dowlat Nowrouzi
NCRI Representative in the UK

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