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Commentary
by U.S. Alliance for Democratic Iran
The
Freedom War Inside Iran
A ferocious war is going on inside Iran. It is
the war the tyrannical regime of ayatollahs has
declared on people of Iran since coming to power
in 1979 in order to preserve its nefarious rule.
At its core, this is a war over two very
different kinds of Iran; a democratic Iran with
a pluralistic secular system of government at
peace with the outside world; and a theocratic
Iran under the tyranny of ayatollahs which
breeds terrorism and proliferate weapons of mass
destruction.
Inspired by a long history of resistance against
despots of different stripes and tapping into
their inner potentials, the Iran’s people have
remained in total defiance of the turbaned
tyrants. Rather than giving in to the
subjugation of the dictators, Iranians have
waged an all out resistance against the
ayatollahs rule and are bent on defeating them
in this fateful war.
The ayatollahs’ regime would have been long gone
if it had submitted to a truly free and fair
elections and will of the people. Instead they
chose to erect gallows in public, create tens of
security and intelligence organs to fight back
the surge for freedom, and turn Iranians’
beloved country into a huge prison for freedom
advocates.
Tehran rulers have relentlessly caused wars and
crisis abroad so that they could hide the war
within. They deliberately prolonged the war with
Iraq, which could they have respectfully ended
in summer of 1982, mainly to extinguish the
flames of a rising resistance inside. They
brought nearly one million casualties on the
Iran’s side alone, and dispatched hundreds of
thousands of teen-age boys with a
“key-to-heaven” around their necks as human
mine-sweepers. They made many enemies abroad so
that their enemy within – the Iranian people –
would be silenced, ignored, and forgotten.
Tens of thousands of Iranian have been murdered
by the gallows, firing squads and in the torture
chambers since 1979. Silencing the opposition at
any cost has been one of the constants during
the ayatollahs’ reign of terror. Thousands of
political prisoners were massacred in summer and
fall of 1988 in what that could only be
described as crimes against humanity,
implicating many of Iran’s current top leaders.
And, still, Iranians, from university campuses
to factories and city streets all over Iran, are
waging their noble struggle against the mullahs
as new generation of Iranians are entering the
battlegrounds of freedom.
Series of uprisings inside Iran in 2006 and 2007
have been followed by recent riots in several
cities over heating fuel shortages and an
ongoing and growing student protest in Tehran
University campus and dormitory. On Sunday,
students had their second day of protest
shouting slogans like "Death to the dictator,"
"We don't want an autocratic rule, we don't want
a suppressive police force."
Surely, the ayatollahs’ strategy of “survival
through fear and terror” will continue to
unleash a brutal crackdown on Iran’s democracy
movement. Two weeks ago, Ibrahim Lotfollahi, a
student in Payam-Noor University in Kurdistan
mysteriously died while in custody for “acting
against the government”. The authorities
brazenly claimed he had committed “suicide,” a
very common official description of dissidents’
death under torture in Iran. In fact another
student, Zahra Bani Yaghoub, 27, also
mysteriously died last October in prison soon
after her arrest by the so-called moral police.
Her death was also officially declared a
“suicide.”
What is to be done? Appeasement of tyrant and
terror-sponsoring ayatollahs does not end their
domestic and foreign aggression. Neither does a
foreign military war. Recent calls by Tehran’s
apologists for making peace with the barbaric
ayatollahs - justified as the only option to
avoid war - is a despicable and deceitful ploy.
Since it is aimed at empowering the ayatollahs
and would surely guarantee a catastrophic war in
later years. It is nothing short of a
Chamberlinesque call for “Peace in Our Time.”
Learning from patriotic resistance of Iranians,
the mullahs’ war to expand their Islamic
fundamentalist rule through terrorism and
proliferation of nuclear weapons must be fought
back. While Iranians are free to use all
legitimate means at their disposal to fight back
the mullahs, the outside world must remain at
war with the ayatollahs’ regime using every
political and financial means, including lending
political support to Iran’s democracy movement
and imposing targeted sanctions on Tehran.
The day the international community realizes
that democratic change from within is the only
way to win the war against ayatollahs, it too
will realize that this will not come without
removing the political and legal restraints from
Iran’s democratic opposition groups,
particularly the People’ Mojahedin of Iran (MEK).
By putting an end to the blacklisting of this
group which is already at the center of
Iranians’ noble resistance movement, the world
would begin to finally stand on the right side
of the freedom war raging in Iran.
(USADI)
USADI
Commentary reflects the viewpoints of the US Alliance
for Democratic Iran in respect to issues and events
which directly or indirectly impact the US policy toward
Iran |