GROUNDBREAKING RESOLUTION IN CONGRESS SUPPORTS REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN
Thomas Paine, one of America’s great founding fathers famously said: “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph”. His words will be familiar to the 145 bi-partisan members of the US House of Representatives who have signed a resolution condemning the Iranian regime’s brutality and repression and calling for protection of dissidents targeted by the regime. The resolution introduced by Texas Republican Randy Weber, recognizes the right of the Iranian people to seek regime change, without calling for US military support. Acknowledging the soaring regional conflict in the Middle East which has “heightened since the October 7, 2023, attacks” by Hamas on Israel, the resolution identifies the mullahs’ regime as the definitive nerve centre for spreading Islamic fundamentalism and commanding and sponsoring terrorism and warmongering across the region. Using their Middle East proxies like Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza, the mullahs have spread terror and war across the zone and further afield, while brutally repressing their own people in Iran.
The resolution in Congress is timely, given the abrupt end to the decades-old shadow war between the Islamic Republic and Israel, which exploded into open conflict with the mullahs’ unprecedented barrage on 13th April when more than 300 drones and missiles were launched at Israel. This triggered Israel’s retaliatory response on 19th April, with airstrikes on military targets in the Iranian cities of Isfahan and Tabriz, and simultaneous drone and missile attacks on Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) compounds in Iraq and Syria. The resolution recognises that Tehran is the head of the snake fomenting war and terror in the region and worldwide and indeed directed and financed the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza. The members of Congress say that Western nations must “hold the Iranian regime accountable for its actions that incite violence, terror, and instability”.
The wide-ranging resolution even expresses support for the 10-point plan for future democracy prepared by Maryam Rajavi, the charismatic president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the main opposition movement to the mullahs’ tyrannical regime. The 10-point plan calls for the universal right to vote, free elections, a market economy, the separation of religion and state, and advocates gender, religious, and ethnic equality, a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, peace in the Middle East, and a nonnuclear Republic of Iran. Identifying the theocratic regime’s use of terror and hostage-taking as statecraft, the signatories to the resolution “recognize the rights of the Iranian people, the protesters, and the Resistance Units to confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and repressive forces to bring about change”. In his impassioned speech in Congress supporting the resolution Rep. Randy Weber said the “rogue regime needs to be overthrown immediately” and that the U.S. must support the “freedom-loving citizens of Iran” who are trying to remove the “murderers” in Tehran.
That such a comprehensive condemnation of the Iranian regime has received large-scale bi-partisan Congressional support will have shaken the mullahs to the core. Their bombastic display of faux force with a parade of soldiers, drones and missiles in Tehran on the IRGC Army Day on 17th April, was a widely derided attempt to cover the spectacular failure of their attack on their arch enemy Israel. Around 99% of the missiles and drones fired at Israeli targets either blew up after launching or were destroyed by the Israeli Iron Dome defence system, with air support from the US, UK, France and Jordan. Intelligence chiefs have reported that around 50% of the cruise and ballistic missiles actually exploded shortly after they were launched, many of them crashing in Iran. In a further fiasco, a water canon malfunctioned during the Army Day parade, spraying bystanders and guests of the mullahs, causing widespread delight and mirth across the nation. The mullahs’ fury at being mocked on social media has already led to several arrests.
The absurd comments by President Ebrahim Raisi have also attracted nationwide derision. Known as the Butcher of Tehran for his bloodstained past as a key executioner, Raisi pompously claimed that the drone and missile strike on Israel had been a huge success and demonstrated to the world the prowess of the Iranian military. Iran’s attack “brought down the glory of the Zionist regime [Israel]”, Raisi said at a military base on the outskirts of Tehran on 17th April. He continued: “This operation showed that our armed forces are ready.” TV news broadcasts on state-run networks showed raging fires which were claimed to be the result of targeted missile strikes in Israel. It transpired the clip used was lifted from an old video of a burning vineyard in Chile!
Quoting directly from the US Declaration of Independence, the House of Representatives’ Resolution emphasizes ‘‘whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government’’, and that ‘‘when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security’’.
The bi-partisan Resolution in the US Congress marks a major turning point in Western attitudes to the Iranian regime. It demonstrates that American lawmakers from all political sides are no longer prepared to accept the abhorrent behaviour of the mullahs’ pariah regime and wish to show their outright support for the Iranian people and their rights within the framework of international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to bring about regime change. The EU and UK must now show their support for this ground-breaking initiative by following America’s lead in blacklisting the IRGC, while also calling for the indictment of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi for human rights abuse and crimes against humanity. Thomas Paine’s words will echo throughout Iran when the people finally celebrate a glorious triumph over the tyrannical mullahs’ regime.
