Middle East Times
By:SHARAM TAROMSARI
Published: May 15, 2008
In a unique action taken by prominent British politicians – including a former home secretary, a former solicitor general, and a former law lord of the United Kingdom – against the British government, Britain’s highest legal authority handed out a humiliating ruling against the government.
This ruling reiterated an earlier ruling by the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission (POAC) in which they described the British government’s attempt to list the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq) as a terrorist organization as ’perverse.’
The 32-page judgment was far stronger and goes beyond what the POAC determined in November 2007.
Closer scrutiny of this judgment undermines the process in which Britain decided to put the PMOI on its terrorist list.
’The reality is that neither in the open material nor in the closed material was there any reliable evidence that supported a conclusion that the PMOI retained any intention to resort to terrorist activities in the future.’
As well as legal implications, this ruling will have many far-reaching political implications for the British government. In this case, the British government stated that:
’While acknowledging that PMOI did not pose a specific threat to the U.K. or British nationals overseas, or have a presence in the U.K.,’ the British home secretary based her decision on the scale of the PMOI’s activities and the ’need to support other members of the international community in their global fight against terrorism.’
Presumably, what the British home secretary meant to do was to support the Iranian regime in its global fight against terrorism!
This is an absurd statement, seeing as time after time the British prime minister himself stated Iran’s role in the support of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere.

This is a major contradiction that the British foreign policy decision makers fail to explain.
The British and American troops in Basra and elsewhere in Iraq are targeted by Iranian made and supplied weapons and many groups in Iraq act as Iranian proxies.
Afghan authorities admitted that it is the Iranian supplied improvised explosive devices and weapons that hamper the efforts by Afghanistan and the United States to bring about some form of normality to that country.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah continues its campaign with Iranian financial support and blessings. Iran’s military assistance is a major factor that has helped Hezbollah conduct its rocket attacks against Israel for so long.

In Gaza, Hamas acts as an Iranian proxy, and many of its members were trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Hamas is the major obstacle for peace between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority.
Therefore for a British home secretary to suggest that Iran is a member of the international community that is committed to war on terrorism is an attempt to deny the facts and borders insanity.
By placing the PMOI on its terror list the British government tried to help prolong the life of a regime that is not only an enemy of the Iranian people but also is a major source of conflict and insecurity in the Middle East.
They simply tried to buy time for the regime by denying the right of the Iranian people and their resistance, lead by the PMOI, to bring about change in Iran.
The ruling by the highest courts in the United Kingdom was a deliberation of justice. The most qualified judges in the U.K., who were impartial and had no political agenda, after examining all the evidence provided by the British government, decided that the PMOI should not have been on its list of terrorist organizations.
This ruling therefore justifies the PMOI and its agenda for democratic change in Iran. The injustice which was done to the PMOI is the same that is being done to people of Iraq and to all those who are targeted by the Iranian regime and their proxies around the world.
The British and American soldiers who die in combat in Iraq are also victims of the silence against the Iranian regime and their actions in that country.

Iranian efforts to destabilize Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority also remain unpunished. For as long as the international community is not prepared to stand up to Iran but instead chooses to appease it, this injustice will continue.
Instead, they must side with the Iranian people and their desire for change. Otherwise the alternative is a regime that pursues its policies through terror, violence and instability in the world’s most volatile region.
The Iranian regime must not be seen as a partner for peace but the cause of insecurity and mayhem.
As the president-elect of the Iranian resistance Maryam Rajavi has stated numerous times, the real partner for peace is the Iranian resistance and people of Iran. Their inspirations are the same values that the international community adhere to and have fought for. The same values that many democracies have fought for and made sacrifices for.
The desire for change is not terrorism, and the most important message of this ruling is that justice cannot be sacrificed in the name of economic and political interests and diplomacy.
It is now time for the European Union and the United States to follow suit by taking the PMOI off their terror lists and acknowledging the right of the Iranian people to democratic change in Iran.
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Dr. Sharam Taromsari is a former lecturer in International Relations and Middle Eastern Security and consultant on Middle Eastern Affairs.