If you’re paying attention to the Middle East today, you’re paying attention to Iran. The Islamic Republic has its hand in a number of regional conflicts, in addition to its long-standing support for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And of course this comes at a time when Iran could also be on the verge of potentially inking an agreement with six world powers which would give it relief from sanctions related to its work on nuclear weapons technology.
If you are paying attention to the Middle East, and thus to Iran, it would be prudent to also pay attention to France later this week. If you keep your eyes on Paris on June 13, you will witness to a powerful demonstration of opposition to Tehran’s clerical regime. The rally organized by the Iranian Diaspora in support of the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran is enormously relevant to questions about how Western policymakers should be dealing with the Islamic Republic during this complex time.
In particular, another view on Iran will provide Americans and Europeans with a better understanding of how the international response to Iran’s behavior can be expected to impact the Iranian people themselves.
It is already well understood that those people have suffered gravely during the previous thirty-six years. And unless observers are blinded by the superficial change in Tehran’s willingness to talk to the US during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, it should be clear that this suffering is now escalating as even more Iranian citizens are put to death in Iranian jails or subjected to long imprisonment for dissent and activism.
These trends indicate that the regime we are dealing with today is the same violent, religiously extremist regime that drove so many of its citizens to flee the country or face death after the Iranian Revolution. On June 13, the NCRI with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (Mek), the principal organized opposition at its core, will speak with one voice on behalf of these people and their long experience in fighting that regime.
