NCRI – A British Lawmaker has written a scathing admonishment of Western Governments tendency to “conceal the atrocities of the regime in Iran”.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, a high-ranking member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom (BPCIF), published his op-ed on Politics Home.
Maginnis, an Independent Ulster Unionist peer, wrote: “Throughout the 37 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, American policy has constantly sought to compromise with a supposed moderate element within the ruling regime.”
He cites President Reagan selling them weapons in exchange for the release of hostages, Clinton labelling the Resistance as terrorists and Obama endorsing a nuclear deal and paying ransom for the release of American hostages.
Maginnis gives thanks for progress made by the Americans, like removing the Iranian Resistance from their list of terrorist groups and instead, adding the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps who are helping to prop up the Syrian dictator Assad.
Indeed, Secretary of State John Kerry offered support for the Albanian government who took in Resistance members from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) group, who had spent 14 years stranded in exile in Iraq and suffered a constant attack from Iran.
Maginnis argues that we must still prioritise human rights with Iran, especially after the lifting of economic sanctions.
He wrote: “Human Rights organisations and activists continually remind us that single-minded obsession with last year’s Iran nuclear agreement has only distracted from the ongoing abuse of the death penalty, the arbitrary arrest of activists and dissidents, the usage of torture.”
He decries President Hassan Rouhani’s alleged moderate credentials, given that in his three-year tenure almost 3,000 people have been executed. Indeed, Maginnis wrote that the last time the situation in Iran was as bad was just after the 1988 massacre which killed 30,000 political prisoners.
He wrote: “The West should have learned from its mistakes regarding its compromising and immoral Iranian policy long ago. It really shouldn’t have required decades of advocacy by the Iranian resistance to unmask a regime that’s rotten to the core. Our relationship with the PMOI had to change for the better before our understanding of the regime did the same. Fortunately, that appears to be happening at last.”