Iran Lobby

Exposing the Activities of the lobbies and appeasers of the Mullah's Dictatorship ruling Iran

Why Does the Iran Lobby Obsess About the MEK?

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Maryam Rajavi speaks at Free Iran Rally in Paris- july 2018

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of Iran’s main opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran(NCRI), speaks during the Free Iran 2018 gathering in Paris-july 2018

In the scope of issues facing Iranian-Americans today related to their homeland, you would think the Iran lobby would have better things to do than publicly trash Iranian dissident and opposition groups on a near-daily basis.

The Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council and a variety of bloggers sympathetic to the Iranian regime, have recently stepped up the vitriol considering widening and near constant protests and demonstrations that have rocked the regime’s grip on power.

What is interesting is that almost all the groups making up the Iran lobby are using nearly identical language focused on trying to disprove the idea that the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq(MEK), one of the largest and oldest Iranian dissident groups, has any support within Iran.

For example, Nahal Toosi, a foreign affairs correspondent at POLITICO, writes in a piece about the Trump administration’s efforts to support regime change in Iran, that:

“One Iranian diaspora faction that has supported many Trump policies is the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a group with leftist roots that the U.S. previously listed as a terrorist outfit. But the MEK has few backers in Iran, even though it has major defenders among Trump’s aides and confidants. Among those who’ve spoken at MEK, events are Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.”

Notably, she mentions that the NIAC is being excluded from a meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and members of the Iranian-American community at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California this weekend, but neglects to mention the NIAC’s deep ties to Iranian regime leaders.

Against the backdrop of hot national debate over the Russian government’s use of third-parties to infiltrate American organizations such as the National Rifle Association to affect U.S. policy, the lack of any investigation or focus on the NIAC’s efforts to do the same thing with the backing of the Iranian government is hypocritical to say the least.

Mahsa Rouhi, a research fellow with the nonproliferation and nuclear policy program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, similarly tries to belittle the MEK in a piece for Foreign Policy, writing “the MEK has no support base inside Iran; in fact, etc.”

But what both Toosi and Rouhi fail to mention are the significant contributions the MEK has made over the years in revealing the regime’s human rights abuses and uncovering its secret nuclear program; none of which could be accomplished without the support and help of Iranians living within Iran who smuggled out clandestine photos and video.

These are not the acts of a few lone dissenters, but rather a strong, clear and forceful expression of the willingness of Iranians to cooperate and help the MEK over the years even though the regime has worked obsessively hard at criminalizing any cooperation with the MEK punishable by imprisonment or even death.

It is hard to credit the Iran lobby with any factual data pointing to zero support within Iran for the MEK given its long history of organizing protests from large-scale mass demonstrations to small, individual acts of defiance such as hanging a banner praising dissident leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the acting president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, over a Tehran overpass to standing atop a box waving a hijab in defiance of morality codes.

Even top mullah Ali Khamenei has been forced to give several speeches recently to denounce the MEK as he recognizes the group’s growing influence on the protests rocking the country; at last count over 142 cities has experienced protests despite massive security crackdowns by the regime.

It’s noteworthy that the Iran lobby discounts the similarities between Iran and other despotic regimes such as North Korea, Cuba and even the old Soviet Union, in which compulsory voting often delivered election “mandates” for the government, but never reflected the true feelings of the population.

Similarly, Iran discounts any support for the MEK when it actively bans its participation in any elections and refuses to allow any of its members to run for elected office. It is doubtful that Toosi or Rouhi can even justify denying a group such as the MEK a chance at the polls to settle the question once and for all about who the Iranian people back to lead them into democracy and freedom.

Most disturbing and yet telling has been the recent arrests of an Iranian diplomat and other agents accused to attempting to plant a 500-gram bomb at an annual gathering of the MEK and other resistance groups outside of Paris last month.

The captured explosive was comprised of TATP, a favorite explosive for terrorists because it is easily prepared from readily available retail ingredients, such as hair bleach and nail polish remover. It is also able to evade detection because it is one of the few high explosives that do not contain nitrogen and can, therefore, pass undetected through traditional explosive detection scanners designed to detect nitrogenous explosives.

TATP has been used in bomb and suicide attacks and in improvised explosive devices, including the London bombings on 7 July 2005, where four suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured more than 700. It was one of the explosives used by the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in his 2001 failed shoe bomb attempt and was used by the suicide bombers in the November 2015 Paris attacks, 2016 Brussels bombings, Manchester Arena bombing and June 2017 Brussels attack.

The arrest in Germany of Asadollah Assadi, a diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Vienna who – in his capacity as an operative for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) – provided the explosives, draws a clear line from the Iranian regime to efforts to destroy the MEK.

Had the terror plot been successful there is no telling what toll it would have taken on the gathering of roughly 100,000 supporters of the NCRI. In addition to Iranian expatriates and NCRI officials, the event included participation and speeches by hundreds of political dignitaries from throughout the world – including prominent American and European politicians representing multiple political parties.

It’s unfortunate the Iran lobby doesn’t talk about those potential lives lost.

 

Holding Mullahs Accountable Should be Human Rights Priority

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Holding Mullahs Accountable Should be Human Rights Priority

Holding Mullahs Accountable Should be Human Rights Priority

Whistleblowing is—by its very nature—a risky and sometimes hazardous activity to engage in, but it also is vital if any society is to be expected to be free and democratic. The U.S. has struggled with whistleblowers going back to the Pentagon Papers case with Daniel Ellsberg exposing the Vietnam War to the modern era with Edward Snowden and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

On the one hand we applaud people like them for exposing corruption or threats to democracy, but on the other hand we worry about national security or exposure of agents who might be caught and killed.

The strength of any free and open society though has been that exposing wrong doing, even if done for a worthy cause, eventually makes that society stronger. An informed public can hold its leaders accountable and for better or worse, the decisions they make are ones the public is responsible for eventually.

In dictatorial regimes though, whistleblowing is regarded with anathema, akin to treason and often prosecuted with the vigor of hunting down spies and traitors. In the case of the Iranian regime speaking out about any transgressions by the regime often gets you killed.

One case of Iranian whistleblowing involved Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani, who was an Iranian physician that examined prisoners who had been wounded or killed during the mass demonstrations against the stolen 2009 election.

He had worked at the Kahrizak detention center and was responsible for the medical care of several prisoners believed to have been tortured by regime officials. One of his patients was Mohsen Ruholamini, a government scientist’s son, arrested following his participation in the post-election protests.

Ruholamini, who was 25 years old, died in prison in July 2009. The death certificate originally identified Ruholamini’s cause of death as multiple blows to the head. A report given to judicial authorities stated that Ruholamini had died of “physical stress, the effects of being held in bad conditions, multiple blows and severe injuries to the body.”

Pourandarjani publicly testified about conditions at the center and following his testimony he was arrested by regime police. During his own imprisonment, Pourandarjani was repeatedly interrogated by an escalating range of regime agencies, after which he was released on bail, but was told to remain silent and received a stream of death threats.

He died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 26. Tehran’s public prosecutor’s office said he died of poisoning from a delivery salad laced with an overdose of blood pressure medication, but regime officials claimed at various points that Pourandarjani had been injured in a car accident, committed suicide, or died of a heart attack in his sleep at the health center at the police headquarters in Tehran where he worked.

That tradition of abusing whistleblowers was giving new life when the son of an Iranian cleric once in line to be supreme leader has reportedly been charged with acting against national security interests by releasing material from his late father that denounces senior Iranian figures for the mass killings of 30,000 dissidents almost 30 years ago.

After interrogation at a religious court in Qom, Ahmad Montazeri was released on bail of almost $23,000, and told to reappear on Wednesday, according to a report by the Iranian opposition group, National Council of Resistance of Iran/People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which claimed the vast majority of those massacred were affiliated with their groups.

Last month, Montazeri released an audio recording of a 1988 meeting between his father, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, and members of a so-called “death panel” charged with carrying out supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mass execution decree.

One of those on the “death panel” – and at the meeting featured on the audio file – was Mostafa Pourmohammadi, an official who has served in several cabinet positions over the years and was controversially appointed Minister of Justice by “moderate” Hassan Rouhani in 2013. In 1988 he was the intelligence and security ministry’s representative at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

“Standing up to the violations of human rights in Iran is also the responsibility of Western governments, because its consequences do not remain within Iran. The terrorism and fundamentalism emanating from it, have been hurting defenseless people in Nice, Paris, and Brussels,” said Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the NCRI at an event in Paris which included friends and relatives of those slain.

Bernard Kouchner, former French Foreign Minister and co-founder of Doctors without Borders (MSF) said: “I ask myself what were the human rights defenders doing at that time?” He called for a “special tribunal to prosecute the mullahs for their crimes.”

“The massacres did not take place only in 1988. Iran continues to have the highest execution rate per capita. The executions have even increased after the nuclear deal,” Kouchner added.

According to Mrs. Rajavi, since Rouhani took office over 2,700 executions have taken place Iran, including the latest, a mass execution of 25 Sunnis prisoners from Iranian Kurdistan.

The fact that the Iranian regime has willfully sought to suppress any dissent and execute those who publicly denounce its actions, means the regime acts with the impunity of a serial murderer that isn’t being hunted by law enforcement. The mullahs feel they can get away with the violence they dole out because the West has failed to hold them accountable.

The revelations by the NCRI of the composition of the infamous death panel in 1988 and how many of those same members have risen to hold important positions within the current regime shows how the promises of the Iran lobby of a new “moderate” regime in the wake of the nuclear agreement were all false.

Ultimately, the U.S. and its allies must no longer ignore the truth of these massacres, nor the willing participation of the mullahs now in power in Tehran to hide the truth from the world.

By Michael Tomlinson

International Human Rights Day Everywhere Except Iran

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International Human Rights Day Everywhere Except Iran

International Human Rights Day Everywhere Except Iran

December 10th marks International Human Rights Day which will be celebrated by the United Nations and nations around the world as recognition of fundamental importance of human rights in free and open societies. The day will be observed with speeches, conferences, panel discussions, protests and solemn observances.

This year’s Human Rights Day will be devoted to a year-long campaign for the 50th anniversary of the two landmark International Covenants on Human Rights: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966.

According to the UN Human Rights Office, the year-long campaign revolves around the theme of rights and freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear — which underpin the International Bill of Human Rights are as relevant today as they were when the Covenants were adopted 50 years ago.

But respect for human rights have been found conspicuously lacking in certain parts of the world; most notably within the Iranian regime where things have gotten so grim the UN High Commissioner appointed Ahmed Shaheed as the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran to monitor the dismal state of affairs in the Islamic state.

Over the past year, 2015 has been a dark stain on human rights progress in Iran as chronicled in the steady stream of press releases put out by the UN about abuses there:

  • January 2015: UN child rights body to investigate 12 countries including Iran for violations involving children;
  • February 2015: UN experts urge Iran regime to halt immediately the execution of a juvenile sentenced by regime courts;
  • March 2015: Human Rights Council adopts the Universal Periodic Review of Iran chronicling the litany of human rights lapses in the regime. The Council also discusses the annual report on human rights in Iran and extends mandates for further review of Iran;
  • May 2015: UN rights experts condemn recent upsurge in executions by the Iran regime, many of them unreported;
  • June 2015: UN experts warn that silencing journalists and activists weakens protections for human rights in Iran;
  • August 2015: UN experts call for an immediate moratorium on applying the death penalty after regime hands downs death sentences to a prisoner of conscience and alternative health practitioner;
  • October 2015: UN rights experts express outrage at the execution of two juvenile offenders; and
  • November 2015: UN experts call on Iran regime to stop intimidating journalists ahead of parliamentary elections.

The UN announcements only cover a tip of the proverbial iceberg as Iranian dissident groups and international human rights groups such as Amnesty International have chronicled an ever growing list of human rights abuses by the Iran regime.

One observance was held in Paris by the Union of Iranian Associations in Europe and included former U.S. Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran who said at the gathering:

“We honor the International Human Rights Day by paying respect to all brave men and courageous women in Iran and around the world who sacrificed their lives or have risen up to bring human rights and democratic freedoms to oppressed nations,” she said.

“Iran’s clerical regime has been condemned 62 times so far by various United Nations agencies for its gross violation of human rights in Iran. In addition, the regime and Khamenei himself, are directly responsible for the massacre of 300,000 Syrians in the past four years and displacement of more than half of the population; they are also directly responsible for the genocide of Sunnis in Iraq by the Quds Force militias,” she added.

The most recent UN condemnation came after 36 human rights organizations, led by Human Rights Watch, called on the regime to improve its human rights situation and for the international community to work together to promote human rights within Iran.

To say the situation is grim in Iran is an understatement since the regime’s revolutionary courts mete out punishment often in closed, secret sessions and impose often medieval punishments proscribed by religious doctrine which include public hangings and amputations of limbs, while also handing out no punishment to those that engage in acid attacks on women or abuse of children.

In 2014 alone, Shaheed noted a reported 753 executions, the highest rate in over a decade. This year rights groups have tallied over 1,000 executions in a staggering display of merciless regime justice.

The butcher’s bill doesn’t even include the bloodshed caused by the regime’s intervention and support of proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen that have caused the largest refugee crisis since World War II and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives of men, women and children.

But it is in the private agony suffered by individual prisoners in Iran’s notorious prisons where the true evil of the mullahs is laid bare to world scrutiny. One such story comes from Rahim Hamid who as a then 22-year old student in 2008 was taken by regime police and endured torture and abuse as he detailed in an interview with the Telegraph newspaper.

“Day and night I could hear the screaming and weeping of fellow prisoners – men, women and children – who were incarcerated and tortured there. It was the norm for guards to inflict casual cruelty, such as forbidding prisoners access to a toilet so that they were forced to urinate in the cell, which stank to a nausea-inducing extent in the heat,” Hamid said.

“Among other forms of physical torture, I was tied to a metal bed frame by the wrists and ankles and savagely whipped. If I resisted or cursed the guards, they would prolong and intensify the torture. They raped me violently and repeatedly with the large whip handle; so brutally that the rape did permanent injury to my rectum, for which I still need medical treatment,” he added.

Hamid’s tale is only one of many that are repeated every day within Iran, immune to the entreaties and condemnations of the international community by mullahs who care nothing except the maintaining of their absolute status as masters over the Iranian people.

And where does the Iran lobby stand on all this? Does it issue condemnations? Does it commemorate the suffering of Iranians? Does it demand the release of American hostages such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini or former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati?

No. The Iran lobby’s silence is deafening.

As the world observes Human Rights Day, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, the leading Iran lobby organization, published and editorial in Huffington Post condemning presidential candidate Donald Trump.

That is the Iran lobby’s contribution to observing human rights.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Human Rights in Iran Matter to the World

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Human Rights in Iran Matter to the World

Human Rights in Iran Matter to the World

This Thursday marks International Human Rights Day, which marks the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which lays out a broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights that eventually formed the foundation of human rights principles binding the UN in its work and through the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In 1948, the world was still picking up the pieces from World War II and the early battle lines of the Cold War were being drawn in a world largely divided between old Soviet-era Warsaw Pact and U.S.-led NATO alliance.

That world is gone and today we are increasingly finding a world divided along secular and sectarian lines as terror has become a tool of statecraft for nations such as Iran and Syria, while other nations such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq are being fought over in what they pretend to be a religious and ideological battle.

In this new world of global terror, human rights have all but vanished in these disputed regions, but whereas the fall of the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall came after an arms race the Soviet Union could not win and the seeds of democracy flourished in places like Gdansk in Poland, the hegemony of Islamic extremists is growing and sinking deeper roots as the West struggles to formulate a coherent strategy to stem the growth of groups such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram.

Central to that any successful strategy though will be how to address the crushing suppression of human rights by the Iran regime against its own people. As one of only three state sponsors of terror left on the U.S. State Department terrorism list, the Iran regime sits in the middle of most – if not all – of the crises occurring throughout the Middle East.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) pointed out during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been fueling turmoil throughout the Middle East even with strict economic sanctions in place.

“Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and in the past several years when Iran had no money, it still found money to be the leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Engel said.

“Under the [nuclear] deal negotiated with Iran, they will be awash in cash, they will have lots of money, and imagine how much destruction they can do in support of terrorist activities and terrorism. That is very deeply troubling for me.”

The mullahs support of Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria has fostered the birth of ISIS and other splintered Al-Qaeda groups, while its mishandling of Iraq’s government collapsed a coalition government driving Sunni tribes out and into the arms of ISIS which soon become a nation-state in its own right with the takeover of Mosul of most of northern Iraq.

Their support of Houthi rebels in Yemen, toppled the government and drove Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States into a shooting war that threatens the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Beyond the foreign policy conundrums the mullahs in Tehran have fomented, it is their treatment of the Iranian people that has caused the most problems because the complete suppression of dissent has enabled the mullahs to keep their hands on power and accomplish their goals of exporting their extremist philosophy around the world.

Without dissent, without a free press and without due process and fair trials, the Iran regime has managed to turn Iran into a virtual police state that would give a Stalinist-era Soviet Union a run for its money in cruelty. That cruelty is not necessarily confined to just political dissent as the Iran regime seeks to impose its punishments on all facets of Iranian life.

Amnesty International noted this in a blistering statement condemning death sentences placed on two Iranian children.

“This ruling lays bare the Iranian authorities’ contempt for the human rights of children, coupled with their appetite for the death penalty – a toxic combination that leaves numerous juvenile offenders facing execution,” said Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

“Iran’s continued use of the death penalty against persons convicted of crimes committed while they were under 18 years of age is cruel, inhumane and blatantly unlawful. The death sentences of both these men, and all other juvenile offenders on death row in Iran, must be commuted immediately.”

As noted by Amnesty International, Iran is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which prohibit the imposition of the death penalty against persons who were below 18 years of age at the time of the crime, without exceptions. However, Iran continues to impose the death penalty against juvenile offenders and frequently defer the execution until after they pass the age of 18, which illustrates the regime’s approach to most international treaties and agreements it signs.

That same contempt has been applied to nuclear agreements the regime has signed, including the most recent one negotiated last July, which it violated through the test firing of new ballistic missiles.

But the regime is facing consequences of its crackdowns as evidenced by the rising tide of protests and demonstrations being mounted within Iran – often at personal risk to the protestors – such as a protest of students expressing frustration over the continuing repression in Iran and demanding for the release of political prisoners, at a ceremony marking Students Day (December 7) in Iran.

But criticism of government officials, and especially of the regime’s top mullah Ali Khomeini, comes at a high cost. Indeed the angry speeches and slogans at the Students Day event were partly sparked by the recent wave of arrests carried out by the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization against journalists, reformists, poets, and artists. Last month four journalists, were among the latest detainees, while many other peaceful activists, such as Bahareh Hedayat, Narges Mohammadi, Atena Faraghdani, and Atena Daemi are still behind bars in Iran.

The protests come on the heels of an announcement that the regime’s revolutionary courts sentenced the managing editor of a state daily newspaper claiming he violated prohibitions on coverage of Mohammad Khatami, a former regime president now described as a seditionist.

The indictment was also notable because the editor, Mahmoud Doaei, of the Ettelaat, one of Iran’s oldest newspapers, was an early figure in the 1979 Revolution. He was a member of the inner circle around Ruhollah Khomeini, the regime’s previous supreme leader who gave birth to the deadly ideology of Islamic extremism, and was considered somewhat protected in the factional feuding that has increasingly marked Iran’s opaque political hierarchy.

All of which points to an almost bipolar exhibition of policy decisions by the regime that have left many Western observers baffled, but to experienced Iranian dissidents, the actions of the regime have been all too typical of past history.

At a meeting sponsored by the Union of Iranian Associations in Europe in Paris the other day, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, drew attention to the efforts of the Iran regime to save the Assad regime in Syria.

She called on Western governments to revise their policy which has so far reinforced the Iranian regime that causes instability in the region and is the main threat to global peace and security, and to make their relations with the Iranian regime contingent on end to executions and torture, and freedom of political prisoners.

“This calls for Western governments to adopt a policy that supports the desires of the innocent people of Syria for a speedy overthrow of Bashar Assad, gives substantial backing to the Free Army of Syria in its struggle against the regime, and insists on the eviction of foreign troops, specifically the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps from Syria and Iraq,” Mrs. Rajavi said.

Only by reforming Iran and bringing about a sectarian, democratic government can the Middle East ever hope to find peace and stability and the first step towards that goal is making human rights a top priority again in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran- The Importance of Resistance as a Force for Good

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18583574530_7b81c1431b_b“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

So said famed American author and poet Henry David Thoreau in his landmark essay “Resistance to Civil Government” in which he argued passionately for the importance of disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau wrote that in 1849 and since then it has influenced the thinking of the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi in the art of civil disobedience.

But resistance to corrupt governments is nothing new. You can look at the 800th anniversary celebrations taking place for Magna Carta, the document that first enshrined protection of church rights, protection for the barons that forced King John of England to sign it from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown.

It is almost a genetic imperative for human beings to resist anything that would aim to shackle the free expression of will, creativity or thought. One would like to think in the 800 years since Runnymede or the 166 years since Walden Pond, the world had advanced more in the area of brutality and corruption, but sadly in some parts of the world, it seems we’ve actually gone backwards.

One such place is the Islamic state of Iran, which under the tight rein of a religious theocracy imposed by mullahs, has committed human atrocities and brutalities at home and abroad with mind-numbing frequency. In the 18 months since Hassan Rouhani was handpicked to become president, over 1,700 political dissidents, religious minorities, cultural subversives and ordinary citizens have been executed, most in barbaric public hangings more appropriate for the Dark Ages than the 21st Century.

But a spark of hope, born 50 years ago in Iran struggling against the despotic rule of one tyrant, only to shift after a revolution was hijacked to fight the mullahs who now rule Iran, has now been fanned into a fierce flame of resistance which was on bold display in a crowded, massive convention hall in Paris on Saturday.

The People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) was started by a group of Muslim Iranian university students, as a Muslim, progressive, nationalist and democratic organization that has since morphed into one of a number of resistance groups joined under the banner of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in working for regime change in Iran and bringing about a new era of freedom and democracy.

The annual meeting sponsored by Iranian diaspora supporting the NCRI brought an impressive crowd of over 100,000, including 600 dignitaries from over 100 nations, together to join in what amounts to a giant pep rally for regime change. It’s a remarkable sight with bleacher stands packed with men, women and children of all ethnicity, religions and languages waving flags enthusiastically, clapping loudly and cheering heartily after speech after speech.

The fact that these people were still just as enthusiastic in the seventh hour listening to speeches by the representatives of Romania and Portugal as they were when Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, head of the NCRI, and Rudy Giuliani, the expressive former mayor of New York, spoke earlier in the day is either a testament to the effectiveness of French coffee or the deep and abiding passion these delegates had for the plight of their brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and children residing in Iran.

Association, let alone membership, with PMOI or its members is punishable by death in Iran. The same holds true for a number of other resistance groups. Yet these people Instagram selfies, tweet defiance and hashtag support to such an extent, the #Iran_Maryam hashtag used for the gathering ended up as a leading global Twitter trend.

But this resistance movement is more than slogans. It carries with it a very real cost and yields tremendous benefits. The NCRI and its extensive network of supporters within Iran has been able to get past government censors, Internet blockades and confiscated satellite dishes to get the word out about protests and demonstrations, arrests, executions and imprisonments and disclosures about secret Iranian nuclear facilities the mullahs were dying to keep secret.

The fact that the resistance gathering took place only two weeks before the June 30 deadline for the current round of nuclear talks was no accident. It was a shout out to the P5+1 group of nations reminding them of the failure to deliver a real deal that not only guarantees Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, but also has to change how it does business in the arena of human rights and it support for proxy wars against its neighbors.

As the gathering closed and satisfied and resolute people boarded their buses and headed for trains, you could hear their determination in their voices and the hope in their faces that the window for regime change was finally at hand, which only makes me wish that “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh was the exit song.

“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.”

By Michael Tomlinson

The Heartbeat of a Resistance Movement

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Rosa-ParksOn December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was asked by a bus driver to move to the back of a municipal bus for coloreds and leave the section reserved for white passengers. In response she said “No.”

A simple word, but one filled with profound meaning because while her act of defiance landed her in jail and caused her to lose her job as a seamstress in a local department store, it launched the now famous Montgomery Bus Boycott which was immortalized in the movie “Selma” and helped push Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to national prominence.

If we consider the context of place and time, Rosa Parks’ decision could not have been an easy one knowing it could land her in an Alabama jail during segregation when scores of blacks had been mistreated or even killed.

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear,” Parks said in response to questions over her fears.

That same mindset is one that countless activists around the world have as they battle oppressive regimes with acts of defiance great and small; whether it was Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Laureate who was shot in the face by Taliban opposed to her activism for women’s rights and education, or Maryam Rajavi, a woman who leads one of the largest resistance groups to the Iran regime in the National Council of Resistance and whose members have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed by the Iran’s religious courts.

Parks quote is important because it clearly illustrates what often separates activists from the rest of us; the willingness to put oneself at risk knowing their actions might bring arrest or even worse upon them.

Nowhere is that more true than in the Islamic state of Iran where the ruling mullahs enforce a brutal religious code that rules everything from civil life to economic matters to making war on its neighbors. Anyone offering up dissent is usually ticketed for a one-way trip to Evin Prison and often a nearby public square for a hanging.

It is a barbaric system that many of risen up to oppose. Mrs. Rajavi’s group, including the PMOI/MEK groups, have led a long-suffering campaign to help get the word out on protests inside Iran past the Internet blockades, social media bans and confiscation of satellite dishes imposed by the mullahs.

This includes recent mass protests by Kurds in the north, large protests over the teetering economy, and waves of protests by teachers sweeping across Iran over wages and working conditions all point to a deep level of disaffection and disenfranchisement by the Iranian people and their religious overlords.

It’s worth remembering that the original Iranian revolution to overthrow the Shah was precipitated with a remarkably similar set of circumstances such as severe economic displacement among the people and a harsh crackdown by the government on dissenters which only grew as the protests grew.

The same scenario is now happening in Iran. Given the steep declines in Iranian GDP over the past year because of the massive drains on the treasury in funding Assad in Syria to the tune of $35 billion and to keep Shiite militias in Iraq equipment and Houthi rebels in Yemen supplied has placed the Iranian economy on a precarious ledge.

This Saturday in Paris, the global resistance to the Iran regime will be holding its annual gathering with a livestream available. We can only hope from that meeting of the thousands come a similar number of Rosa Parks whose simple acts of defiance can be the building blocks, brick by brick, of a new, democratic and free Iran.

By Laura Carnahan

Important Day for Voice of Opposition to Iran Regime

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Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian opposition, testifying before the US Congress via video conference

Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian opposition, testifying before the US Congress via video conference

The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade held a hearing on Capitol Hill on the rise and threat posed by ISIS. That in and of itself is not earthshattering news since elected officials have debated heatedly how to address the growing pandemic that is extremist Islamic groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram and the Houthis.

hat was significant was the witness list of speakers because on it was Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, who made an appearance via videoconference. It was an important appearance because it represented a key opportunity for the strongest voice of the largest grassroots dissident group to the regime to address Congress on the links between ISIS and Iran.

As Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) noted in his comments, the NCRI has proven instrumental in the past in revealing secrets the Iran regime has sought to keep hidden from the outside world such as the secret Natanz nuclear research facility.

Mrs. Rajavi was given the opportunity by the subcommittee because NCRI members have been on the ground in Iran and Iraq having vast knowledge of the situation as the main opposition to the regime in Iran and given the role of the Iranian regime in all crisis in the region. Because there are literally hundreds of thousands of people displaced or brutalized by ISIS and militia forces controlled and directed by Iran’s mullahs, the NCRI has shown itself to be very knowledgeable regarding the regime’s activities in the region.

In her comments to the subcommittee, Mrs. Rajavi explained the origins of ISIS, such as the funding and training of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Iran, including even a doctorate degree in Islamic jurisprudence from Baghdad Islamic University, along with Iranian support for other key ISIS founders who arose out of the war fought against U.S. and coalition forces during the invasion of Iraq and the sectarian civil war in Syria that Iran was backing.

Mrs. Rajavi dubbed the Iran regime as the “godfather” of the Islamic State militant group and noted that “the ultimate solution to this problem is regime change.”

She went on to explain the core issue linking the Iran regime and the Islamic State was the perpetuation of violent and extremist Islamic teachings which provided a template of terror, brutality and abuse for terror groups to follow.

And in a clear warning to Representatives in attendance, she urged caution in approving any nuclear deal that rewarded Iran with economic relief without concrete proof of dismantling of its nuclear program.

“None of the sanctions should be lifted before an agreement has been signed that effectively and definitively denies the mullahs the bomb,” Mrs. Rajavi said. “Otherwise, the regime will spend billions of unfrozen assets to buy weapons, including advanced missiles from Russia.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) praised Ms. Rajavi’s appearance as well and called the session “a historic hearing,” notable for bringing Iran’s opposition into official discourse.

That, more than anything else, was what the Iran regime’s lobbying and PR machine feared the most. The idea that a moderate, Muslim woman, leading a group of dissidents to Iran’s mullahs, would actually be able to speak before the greatest legislative body in the world and tell simply and matter-of-factly of the horrors and abuses being visited on thousands of her fellow Iranian citizens.

It is even more laughable when you hear of some of the complaints voiced by these regime apologists who apply one standard to the NCRI in denouncing it, yet in another breath argue for open and honest dialogue and trust with the Iran regime that has a three decade history of kidnapping, targeting, attacking and killing thousands of American military and civilian personnel in places such as Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

The fact that Mrs. Rajavi was able to speak represents a small, but historic step in allowing the voices of those most oppressed to finally have a voice and a forum.

By Laura Carnahan