Senior UK lawmaker calls for support for NCRI

Without explicit support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the United Kingdom would never be able to truly confront the brand of Islamic fundamentalism that ISIS represents, David Jones, a Conservative Member of Parliament in the UK has argued.

"There should be no doubt in the West that Tehran is using its proxies to compete with ISIS for dominance in Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East. Iran has absolutely no interest in defeating and degrading the Islamic fundamentalism that is threatening the region," Mr. Jones wrote on Tuesday in the website The Diplomat.

"The West should understand this reality and seek to forge a strategy that gives the nations of the Middle East back to their own people, supports popular democratic aspiration and helps build strong democratic institutions," said Mr. Jones, a former Secretary of State for Wales and a leading member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom (BPCIF).

"A true will to fight will be on display on June 13 in Paris, when the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the democratic coalition of Iranian opposition groups, holds its annual rally against the destabilizing policies of the theocratic regime in Tehran. Last year’s gathering was attended by almost 100,000 Iranian expatriates and their international supporters. The rally was an indication of the extent of the often marginalized networks which, however, enjoy significant popular support that exist both in and beyond the Middle East and which work for democratic progress in Iran and throughout the region.

"The Iranian resistance, the Free Syrian Army, and the other moderate Middle Eastern movements that will be represented at this year’s event attract support from a range of British and American political figures and jurists, as well as from representatives of other liberal democracies. Many will be voicing that support at the Paris rally; but more support of this kind is needed if Western nations are to be able to show moral cohesion on a broad scale. Without explicit support for groups such as the NCRI, Britain will never truly confront the brand of Islamic fundamentalism that ISIS represents," he added.