After Tehran-backed terror plot against Iranian opposition’s convention on June 30 was thwarted by the Belgian authorities and a Vienna-based diplomat of Iranian regime was arrested in Germany as the main perpetrator of the terror plot along with several individuals affiliated to the regime who were arrested in Belgium and France in this regard, the Iranian regime is trying to use an old trick of escaping forward by portraying the defeated terror plot as stage-setting to evade the consequences of their evil action. The mullahs are ridiculously claiming that the plot was a “false flag” and blaming the opposition for trying to bomb their own gathering while all evidences indicate Iran’s top officials approved the terror plot.
In this regard, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) issued the following Statement to shed lights on the regime’s attempts to cover up this scandal and minimize its consequences:
Iran Regime’s Escaping Forward Following the Defeat of Terrorist Plot
Following the Grand Gathering of the Iranian Resistance in Paris and the failure of the mullahs’ terrorist plot and the arrest of regime’s agents, including a terrorist diplomat, the regime’s Supreme National Security Council held a meeting upon Khamenei’s order and commissioned the relevant bodies such as the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards intelligence, and the state-run media to work to minimize the consequences of this big scandal.
1 – The government apparatuses and authorities were obliged to pin the blame on the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) to cover this scandal. This is a well-known trick of escaping forward by which they attempt to portrait the arrest of the terrorists in Belgium and France and the arrest of a terrorist diplomat in Germany as a stage-setting to frame the regime on the verge of Rouhani’s visit to Europe, claiming that the PMOI had trapped that terrorist diplomat.
Following the release of the statement by Belgium Prosecutor and Federal Security Agency, the regime’s foreign minister said: “Just at the time the president’s visit to Europe begins, an Iranian operation is disclosed and its “perpetrators” are arrested.” He added that he is ready to cooperate with relevant authorities to clarify what is “just a deceptive operation to give a false address.”
2 – Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the secretary of the regime’s Expediency Council, in order to implement the same directive, made a cock and bull story to promote the two arrested terrorists in Belgium to high-ranking members of the PMOI. He wrote shamelessly that the two “contacted the diplomat and talked about their readiness to cooperate with Iran …” and that’s why “these two people met with our diplomat in a place where a package was exchanged which was recorded by closed-circuit cameras or by the Monafeqin [the term used of the PMOI by the regime]”. “These two members of the Monafeqin made themselves subject to the arrest, and confessed to such a plot led by the Iranian diplomat,” said the former stupid commander of IRGC.
3 – The regime’s scenario, which was revealed by the Belgian authorities, clarifies further absurd comments fabricated by the mullahs’ Supreme Security Council. A Belgian police official said: “In Luxembourg, there was a meeting that was under control, and all together (security services from different countries) quickly worked to discover the bomb and arrest Assadi. The regime seems to have hoped that the bombing would be seen as a PMOI’s internal issue, which was a theory that could have been credible, but when we arrested their people during the act, the situation changed. “( BuzzFeed website- July 11, 2018)
4 – At the same time, the Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned some in Europe and the US who support the regime, including those interested in appeasing the regime, to pretend as if some elements in the regime arbitrarily planned for this terrorist crime. Daniel Benjamin, the counterterrorism coordinator at the US Department of State in Obama’s administration, who exhausted all his efforts and up to the last minute to prevent implementation of the court’s verdict to delist the PMOI, and whose hysteric hostility towards the PMOI has clear motives, said in this regard that he can’t eliminate the possibility that this could be a rogue operation planned by Iranian security services — or by radical elements within the Iranian security services — aimed at embarrassing the Rouhani government and perhaps even putting them in charge of an embattled Iran.
5 – Extraterritorial units of the Quds Force and the Ministry of Intelligence stations outside the country were once again required to focus on the use and recruitment of indigenous elements in Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo in order to implement terrorist plans against the PMOI in Albania through them. The radio and TV overseas directorate of the mullahs was also obliged to prepare fake films and reports against the PMOI in these countries in order to set the stage for criminal acts.
6 – The IRGC was mandated to expand the scope of its intelligence and espionage activities for obtaining information from within the PMOI.
National Council of Resistance of Iran
Security and Counterterrorism Committee
July 19, 2018
