WORLDWIDE BACKING FOR RAJAVI’S PLAN CAN GIVE IRAN A NEW FUTURE

Last month, 82 members of the Scottish parliament signed a statement affirming their support for protesters in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The document signed by the 82 MSPs also recognized the nature and importance of the underlying movement for regime change. This declaration is of key importance, as it comes at a time when the Iranian regime is working tirelessly to promote the idea that the status quo has been reestablished across the country, following the most recent nationwide uprising that began last September, after the 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was killed by morality police’ in Tehran.

In fact, the clerical regime is still struggling to restore order, facing the dawning realization that it may never succeed in doing so. Women continue to go about their daily lives without wearing the legally mandated hijab, despite threats of increasingly draconian punishment for violating the Islamic dress code. Meanwhile, videos continue to reach social media from cities and towns across the country, showing that young women and men are still chanting provocative, anti-government slogans on a nightly basis

Many of the slogans call for “death to the dictator”, deliberately recognizing no difference between the current regime’s supreme leader and the Shah who was overthrown in 1979, despite the surprise re-emergence of the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, who, after 44 years of near invisibility, has suddenly undertaken a world tour, touting his wish to restore the hated monarchy. The recurring nationwide protests have been coordinated since at least 2014 by a network of “Resistance Units” affiliated with the leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK. This group stands at the head of a coalition known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which in turn has designated someone to serve as transitional president after the mullahs are overthrown.

That official, Maryam Rajavi, has outlined a ten-point plan for Iran’s future, which lays the groundwork for the country’s transition to a secular-democratic system, of the kind that would fit seamlessly in the modern community of nations. The plan provides 85 million repressed and impoverished Iranians with something worth fighting for, so it is little wonder that they have continued to push for regime change over the course of the past eight months, in open defiance of a brutal crackdown, which has left more than 750 people dead and precipitated a surge of executions by the regime, designed to terrorize the dissenters.

At the same time, Mrs. Rajavi’s ten-point plan also provides the UK and other Western powers with something concrete to support. Up to this point, their response to large-scale unrest in Iran has only been to endorse free expression in the most general terms and to condemn escalating human rights abuses, all while doing little to support the movement for regime change. But this hands-off approach has no doubt been motivated by a failure to recognize the true nature of the conflict unfolding in Iran.

With the statement on Iran signed by the majority of members of the Scottish Parliament, that knowledge gap is now being filled and the international community will begin to understand what could be accomplished by the broad adoption of assertive policies toward the Iranian regime – specifically policies that aim to offer a viable, democratic alternative to that tyrannical regime.

Toward that end, this statement is urging the British government, the EU and its member states to sever existing ties with the Islamic Republic and to follow the US example in blacklisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the regime’s Gestapo, and the entity most responsible for brutal crackdowns on dissent – as a terrorist organization. The statement also asks Western governments, the International Criminal Court, and all other relevant bodies to demand legal accountability from those Iranian officials and institutions that have violated human rights en masse, both before and during the latest Iranian uprising.

Such decisive action against the mullahs’ regime, would demonstrate more clearly than ever, that the democratic nations of the world stand with the Iranian people in their demand for regime change and in their wish for the kind of secular democratic future that would be achieved by the implementation of Maryam Rajavi’s ten-point plan. In a breakthrough that has rocked the tyrannical Iranian regime and fired a shot across the bows of western appeasers, 107 former world leaders have joined Scotland’s MSPs in signing a similar joint statement of solidarity with the people of Iran, showing their support for the opposition NCRI and its key constituent organization – the MEK. Signatories to the letter include 50 former Presidents, 47 former Prime Ministers, one former Chancellor, and nine other former Heads of State from across the world. Two former Presidents of the European Commission and three Nobel Peace Prize laureates are also among the signatories.

A solid majority of the Scottish parliament, including members from all parties and a dozen different committee chairs, have now formally recognized that the Iranian people reject all forms of dictatorship and are working to establish a secular, democratic system based on the rule of law. It is fair to say that there is no cause more worthy of support from democratic governments, especially under present circumstances, when so much progress has already been made toward that objective, in a nationwide movement that was led from the outset by courageous women, despite so many authoritarian efforts to impede it.