Townhall | Struan Stevenson | Jun 17, 2024
It has been a month of shame and humiliation for the West. First, the UN General Assembly held a memorial service to honor ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ – Ebrahim Raisi, the president of Iran who was killed in a helicopter crash on May 19. Raisi was a bloodstained executioner who boasted of his involvement in the hanging of over 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, mostly members or supporters of the Iranian democratic opposition movement the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). For the UN, as the last bastion of the struggle to end human rights abuse and the last redoubt of fighting crimes against humanity, to commemorate such a monster was the ultimate disgrace.
Then on June 15, in a shameful act of appeasement, the Swedish government announced the release of Hamid Noury, the blood-soaked executioner also involved directly in the 1988 massacre. He was detained in Stockholm in 2019 when visiting friends in Sweden and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, following an extensive trial, when survivors of the 1988 massacre and families of some of the victims, gave evidence of his key role in the hanging of thousands of men and women from the MEK. Noury’s release, in a so-called ‘prisoner-swap’ for two innocent Swedish citizens taken hostage by the mullahs’ regime and jailed on trumped-up espionage charges, is a disgrace and completely undermines the EU’s system of justice, effectively rewarding the Iranian regime for their gangster tactics of blackmail and hostage-taking, emboldening them to commit further crimes.
This abject act of appeasement was further exacerbated by the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security – Josep Borrell – who thanked Swedish and Omani authorities for mediating the deal with the Iranian regime. Borrell went even further by stating: “Other EU citizens are still arbitrarily detained in Iran. We’ll continue to work for their freedom together with EU member states”. Clearly Borrell is happy to capitulate to the hostage-taking and outrageous criminal tactics of the mullahs. Borrell was echoing the earlier release in a similar prisoner-swap deal of Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, who was sentenced to 20 years jail in Belgium for his central role in a bomb plot to kill hundreds at a Summit in Paris in 2018 organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Once again, the mullahs simply seized a young Belgian charity worker and sentenced him to 40 years imprisonment and 70 lashes on completely fabricated charges of spying, using him as a hostage in a proffered ‘prisoner-swap deal’.
Encouraged by their success and the feeble response of Western governments to their threats and menaces, three days before the release of Hamid Noury in Sweden, the mullahs sought the active participation of the French authorities in a coordinated incident at an office of the supporters of the NCRI. The building in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône in northern Paris was subjected to two terrorist attacks on May 31 and June 11, 2023, on one occasion when six bullets were fired at the building by hooded assailants and on the second occasion when a firebomb was thrown at the offices. Suspects arrested in connection with these attacks are still in custody as further investigations take place. They are believed to have been recruited by the Iranian regime.
Having identified the NCRI offices as a target, the mullahs’ clearly put pressure on President Macron to take further action in exchange for the release of a French hostage seized in Tehran. On June 12, officials from the URSSAF – the French government’s organization for the collection of social security and family benefit contributions, arrived at the premises and asked to check the identity papers of the dozens of staff employed there. Apparently, it was a very civil and well-mannered investigation, although it was noted that journalists and photographers from Le Parisian magazine had accompanied the URSSAF officials on the visit.
Almost immediately and while the URSSAF officials were still inside the building, photos and a news story appeared on TF1-LCI – the French rolling news channel, claiming that the “MEK offices” had been “raided” by the police. This report was instantly repeated on state-controlled media in Iran, accompanied by lurid and transparently false claims that weapons had been found in the building, three people had been arrested and the building had been sealed. A statement was issued by Kazem Gharibabadi, the Judiciary’s Deputy for International Affairs, claiming the regime had been monitoring the operation in real time. Astute observers suspected the entire circus had been coordinated closely between President Macron and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, especially given the fact that the mullahs soon announced they were releasing the French hostage.
Iranian state-media have now ramped up their propaganda, highlighting the false stories about the so-called “attack” on the NCRI offices, which they describe as the headquarters of the ‘NCRI terrorist” organization in France. They use the story as a basis for demanding Western action to prohibit the activities of the Iranian opposition and to ban the annual NCRI rally, which this year will be held in Berlin at the end of June, when more than 100,000 opponents of the mullahs’ regime will participate. The knee-jerk surrender of Macron and other Western leaders to such appalling acts of delinquent statecraft are a disgrace. Continual attempts to appease this evil regime have failed again and again and must be abandoned. The West must show their moral support for the 85 million Iranians who demand regime-change and wish to see the restoration of a secular republic, where human rights, women’s rights, justice, freedom, and democracy are respected in a non-nuclear Iran. Craven acts of appeasement will encourage the mullahs to take more innocent hostages, commit further acts of international terror, sponsor more proxy-wars across the Middle East and connive with their partners China, Russia and North Korea to undermine the West.