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Urging America to get on the “Right Side of History”, Groups Ask Obama to Unshackle Main Democratic Opposition Against the Regime
Iran Freedom March across the White House, October 22, 2011, 11 AM. Click on the image for the high resolution PDF version.
“This brazen plot to murder the Saudi diplomat and plant bombs in public places in the nation’s capital show the extent to which Iran has undertaken a clandestine war on America’s streets,” said Nasser Sharif, of the Californian Society for a Democratic Iran. “It is clear that no amount of political concessions or economic incentives will seduce the regime into moderating its behavior. The mullahs are getting a message of weakness from the West. It’s time for the U.S. to lead in undermining and removing this hostile regime by untying the hands of the main Iranian opposition.”
Indeed, a range of concessions combined with ineffectual punitive measures such as economic sanctions applied by the west against regime have been met with increased domestic crackdowns in Iran, terrorist meddling in Iraq, the U.S. and elsewhere, and an unabated dash toward nuclear weapons.
“The current policy of ‘engagement’ rests on naïve hope rather than hard experience. The U.S. must expand its range of options in dealing with this irredeemable regime, which now include only ineffectual sanctions to unrealistic military strikes. The litmus test of this policy change is the unshackling of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which was a concession made by the U.S. to the regime 14 long and unproductive years ago.”
The MeK was put on America’s list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTO) in 1997. The highest courts in the United Kingdom, the European Union and France have struck down the terrorist designation of the MEK as perverse, resulting in the group’s delisting in the UK and the EU in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, rendered a judgment in July 2010, telling the State Department that it had erred in maintaining MEK’s designation. Some 450 days after the court remanded the case to the Secretary, the Department is yet to make a decision, flouting the rule of law in the process.
“The MeK is a key player to topple the regime and ensure a democratic, non-nuclear future in Iran. The FTO designation has acted as a license to kill members and sympathizers of the MEK in Iran and Iraq. Several have been hanged by the Iranian regime; the government of Nuri al-Maliki has attacked its members in Camp Ashraf in Iraq twice, killing 47 and wounding more than 1,000 residents,” added Mr. Sharif,
The communities, which represent thousands of Iranians from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, will hold a major rally outside the White House on Saturday, October 22, to urge the administration to abandon the policy of engagement and embrace regime change by Iranians in dealing with the theocracy ruling Iran.
Media Contact: Nasser Sharif California Society for Democracy in Iran, 562 221 8000, california.csdi@yahoo.com
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SOURCE California Society for Democracy in Iran
