Days before a major Iranian dissident rally in France, the head of the host organization says the “circumstances are ripe for regime change” in Tehran, but Washington and other Western governments are standing in the way by legitimizing the regime of Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei through the pursuit of a nuclear deal.
“Through their policy of appeasement and giving concessions to the regime, Western governments have served as an obstacle to the regime’s overthrow,” said Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. “In the absence of Western assistance, this regime would have fallen by now.”
Mrs. Rajavi made the remarks in an exclusive interview with The Washington Times ahead of an annual gathering that the council — an umbrella organization that members say includes more than 300 Iranian opposition groups peppered across 24 nations — is holding Saturday on the outskirts of Paris.
Organizers expect there will be well over 100,000 supporters at the rally, where Mrs. Rajavi says she intends to trumpet a simple but aggressive message: “The religious dictatorship ruling Iran — which is based on the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, or ‘absolute clerical rule’ — serves as the stimulus and epicenter of the menace of fundamentalism masquerading as Islam in the region and the rest of the world.”
“Western governments, especially the U.S.,” she told The Times in an email exchange this week, have made a “mistake” by “drawing a distinction between Shiite fundamentalism and Sunni fundamentalism” and thinking that Shiite Iran can be trusted to confront the recent rise of Sunni extremism in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
“The main objective of fundamentalism is to establish an Islamic Caliphate and to implement Sharia law by force,” Mrs. Rajavi said. “This phenomenon does not recognize any borders and its Shiite and Sunni variants are essentially cut from the same cloth.
“The failure to prevent the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq after the 2003 Iraq War, which morphed into the gradual occupation of Iraq by the Iranian regime, gave an unprecedented boost to the growth of fundamentalism,” she added. “Similarly, the [Khamenei] regime’s crimes in Syria and Iraq and the genocide against Sunnis, which is accompanied by Western silence, have enabled the rise of [the Islamic State].”
A complicated history
Mrs. Rajavi’s anti-regime proclamations have long appealed to neoconservative Republicans, as well as to some hawkish Democrats. But her group, known by the acronym “NCRI,” has a turbulent history in Washington.
While no one disputes the organization is massive — some even describe it as the largest Iranian dissident group in the world — its most influential faction is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an outfit that for years was listed by Europe and the U.S. as a terrorist organization.
The MEK, which engaged in a power struggle against leaders of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, was known to have carried out terrorist attacks against Iranian government targets during the 1980s. Although U.S. officials say it also participated in attacks on Americans, MEK representatives have long argued that the terrorist listing was never driven by any legitimate U.S. national security concerns.
And, after an exhaustive campaign that saw supporters spend millions lobbying and cozying up to current and former U.S. officials, the MEK was removed from EU and U.S. terror lists in 2009 and 2012, respectively.
While media scrutiny of the group has lingered, the bigger, umbrellalike NCRI has come to be known during more recent years as perhaps the only dissent group on the planet with enough money and political juice to rally tens of thousands of supporters in the heart of Europe each June behind a collective call for the overthrow of Iran’s Shiite Islamist government.
And it’s not just Iranians who show up. Last year’s gathering brought together a bipartisan who’s who of former high-level U.S. officials and political players. Howard Dean was there. So were John Bolton, Bill Richardson and Newt Gingrich.
Several who spoke with The Times acknowledged that their expenses were being paid by the NCRI. But each also asserted that their support for the group’s core message was real and passionate.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/11/khamenei-regime-in-iran-legitimized-by-obama-nucle/#ixzz3csgTHpcl
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