THE MULLAHS’ MISSILES
Following warnings last week by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia and the Kremlin “will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine”, Masoud Pezeshkian, the so-called ‘reformist’ president of Iran has said that Tehran will never give up on its missile program. Pezeshkian claims that the clerical regime needs such deterrence for its security in a region where Iran’s arch-enemy Israel is able to “drop missiles on Gaza every day.” Antony Blinken said that Iran’s ballistic missile program was “a threat to all of Europe” and showed how Iran’s “destabilising influence reaches far beyond the Middle East”. Western intelligence experts say that there is also credible intelligence that Iran has supplied Russia with new surface-to-surface 4th generation Khorramshahr long-range ballistic missiles, with a range of 2,000 km, supplied by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) aerospace force.
Blinken told a news conference in London: “Dozens of Russian military personnel have been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles. Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine against Ukrainians”. The Iranian-built missiles are small and lightweight and can be placed in multiple batches on truck-based launchers. News of the Iranian missiles was condemned by the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who described the situation as “a significant escalation.” Until now, the mullahs’ regime has supplied Vladimir Putin with kamikaze attack drones, ammunition and artillery shells. To the great exasperation of President Zelensky of Ukraine, President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are still hesitating to allow him to use long-range US and UK cruise missiles, including British storm shadow missiles, to hit military targets deep inside Russia.
Zelensky is right to be concerned. Western acquiescence to threats from Putin simply emboldens him. His chilling warning that the US and NATO would be at war with Russia if they allowed Zelensky to use long-range missiles, neatly sidesteps the fact that Putin is using Iranian missiles to hit civilian targets deep inside the sovereign territory of Ukraine. Putin’s illegal war has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives, on both sides, including thousands of Ukrainian women and children scythed down by indiscriminate Russian attacks. The hypocrisy of the EU in this context is breath-taking. France, Poland, Hungary and other EU nations are still purchasing Russian gas, while hiding behind a charade of tough economic sanctions against Putin and the Russian elite. The US, UK and EU have used the same sanctions playbook to obscure their lack of effective retaliation against Iran, where the decades-long, failed policy of appeasement continues apace, with Western leaders now openly buying into the misconception that the new Iranian President Pezeshkian is a ‘moderate’ and a ‘reformist’.
The repeated concessions made by Western democracies to the Iranian regime, namely the blacklisting of the Iranian resistance – the People’s Mojahdein of Iran/Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) – as a terrorist organization, the deeply flawed JCPOA nuclear deal, the release of $ tens of billions of frozen assets, the swapping of innocent European or American hostages for convicted Iranian criminals, have all come to nothing. The Iranian regime has not been appeased or forced to behave rationally. On the contrary, the mullahs’ reading of all these attempts to appease them has been to perceive the West as weak and spineless and consequently to encourage their leaders to be more and more aggressive and to redouble their hostility.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not an opponent with which one can engage and interact under the rules of international politics. It is a fanatical, corrupt and terrorist state based on ideological dogmas that make impossible any evolution from inside. The distinction between moderates and hardliners in this regime is a mirage, an illusion. All their components are the same, they are all subservient to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has absolute power and whose modus operandi is to try to impose his fundamentalist goals by means of violence, blackmail and deceit. This is why President Pezeshkian has reiterated his belief that his sole policy in office will be to carry out the instructions of the Supreme Leader. This is why he has boasted that Iran will never give up its missile program. It is also why Pezeshkian will continue the mullahs’ clandestine race to produce a nuclear missile, threatening world peace.

Western powers must now face up to reality. The US, UK and France must give the greenlight to Zelensky to use their long-range missiles against military targets deep inside Russian territory. Appeasement and dim-witted dialogue with the Iranian regime and their closest allies must end. Backing the Iranian people and their Resistance in their desire to overthrow the tyranny of the mullahs must become the key foreign policy objective of the US, UK and EU. They must seek to isolate the Iranian regime, closing all Western embassies in Tehran and expelling all Iranian diplomatic personnel from our territory. For years the mullahs have used their embassies as bomb factories and terrorist hubs. Their closure would send the message that the international community regards the Islamic Republic of Iran as a pariah regime. It would be an enormous morale boost for the beleaguered Iranian people.
The EU and UK must also designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, as they have already done in America and Canada. Blacklisting the IRGC would neutralize their ability to continue bankrolling, training and sustaining Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shi’ia militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The West must maintain constant and relentless pressure on the mullahs’ regime for their persistent violations of human rights and crimes again humanity at home, and their warmongering and sponsorship of terrorism abroad. Western leaders should also give full political and financial support to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) as the real alternative to the Iranian dictatorship and the only Iranian organization able to conduct the transition to democracy in a peaceful and orderly way. It is time for us to stand by the people of Iran in their struggle to get rid of the ayatollahs and achieve freedom and democracy. The downfall of the mullahs would shatter the so called ‘Axis of Resistance’ that encompasses the world’s most evil autocracies – Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran. It would be the harbinger of peace.