The Times – Iranian regime can’t be broken with bombs, says opposition leader
Hopes that the US-Israeli bombing campaign will topple the regime in Tehran are vain, according to the head of the movement that claims to embody the Iranian resistance.
Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a Paris-based umbrella organisation, also dismissed suggestions that a deal could be made with a moderate leader within the country’s theocracy as unrealistic.
Rajavi, 72, who is in France, is vying with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah, to be seen as an alternative to the country’s religious rulers. Both have supporters in the West, and also detractors sceptical of their claims to have backing in Iran itself.
Rajavi stopped short of criticising the US-Israeli intervention but did not give it her backing.
“The Iranian people will write their destiny with the blood of their own children, and there is no need for foreign intervention,” she said.
In one recent comment on the war, President Trump suggested that a Venezuela-style solution — replacing a hostile ruler with one from within the same regime but willing to serve US interests — would be “perfect”.
Rajavi believes this would be a mistake. Ever since her movement entered into resistance against the ayatollahs 44 years ago, “we have said the regime is incapable of reform and must be overthrown”, she said. “Had these warnings been heeded, the world would not be facing today’s crisis and war. Unfortunately, the policy of appeasement has led to this situation.”
She said: “Western governments justified concessions to the regime under the illusion that it would [become] moderate.” Instead, the so-called moderates and reformists had shown themselves to be “monsters massacring protesters in the streets and pursuing nuclear weapons, missile programmes and proxy terrorism”.
The NCRI, which announced the creation of a “provisional government” in exile to coincide with the start of the US-Israeli military intervention last month, is well connected in the West. Among those listed as speakers at the movement’s conferences in recent weeks were John Bercow, the former speaker of the House of Commons; Sir Liam Fox, the former defence secretary; and David Jones, the former Brexit minister, along with two of Nato’s former supreme commanders in Europe, General James Jones and General Wesley Clark.
The NCRI was not always on good terms with US military leaders. Created in the 1960s as an Islamic-Marxist movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) fought against the US-backed shah and killed at least six American soldiers and civilians in the 1970s, according to the State Department.
It initially supported the 1979 revolution which toppled the shah, but soon changed tack and took up arms against the new regime, which it says has since executed more than 100,000 of its “supporters and members” and jailed and tortured more than 500,000 of its activists.
The movement now claims to have “resistance units” in all of Iran’s 31 provinces and says that it was active in the January protests, which were suppressed with the loss of at least 7,000 lives, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Rajavi said the survival of the resistance in the face of systematic persecution showed that it had “strong social backing capable of sheltering this network, financing it, and continually replacing detained members”.
The NCRI says it is committed to such values as pluralism, freedom of speech, human rights, an independent judiciary, gender equality, the protection of ethnic minorities and a “non-nuclear Iran … devoid of weapons of mass destruction”.
It has proposed a “road map” for Iran after the overthrow of the religious regime, involving a six-month transitional government leading to the election of a national assembly that will appoint a new cabinet and draw up a constitution. Rajavi said she was not herself “seeking power, nor even a share of power. Our goal is that the Iranian people should choose their own government freely.”
She made it clear she thought Iranians should not choose Pahlavi.
“He only represents the shah’s one-party dictatorship, notorious for torture, killing opponents, and a dreaded secret police called Savak. Reza Pahlavi has no credibility other than being the son of a deposed dictator.”
Yet her critics say her movement has a chequered past too. In the mid-1980s, the NCRI’s main component, the PMOI, was forced to leave exile in France as part of a hostage deal between Paris and Tehran. Welcomed by Saddam Hussein, it sided with Iraq in the war with Iran. At the time, it was led by Rajavi’s husband, Massoud, who disappeared shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many observers believe he is dead, although this is unconfirmed.
When based in Iraq, the movement was accused of trying to isolate its followers from their families to ensure total commitment to its cause. Former members said they were separated from their parents as children. Couples were reportedly told to divorce. A US State Department report in 1994 said it had “all the main attributes of a cult”. The report also noted that in 1992, members of the movement had “stormed Iranian diplomatic missions” in 11 countries including Britain.
In 1997, the PMOI was designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, with Britain and EU nations following suit.
The movement said the terror designation and the claims that it was a cult were an unfounded sop to Iran during the era of appeasement. In 2007, the British Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission backed it, saying the terrorist designation was “perverse” and telling the government to lift it. The US took a similar step in 2012.