The Islamic Republic of Iran may have a new president, but their propensity to humiliate and hoodwink the West has not changed. President Masoud Pezeshkian is striving to form a new cabinet of so-called ‘moderate’ politicians, with an allegedly western-friendly diplomat - Abbas Araghchi, as foreign minister, and even including the nomination of a woman - Farzaneh Sadegh, for the role of roads and urban development minister. All of the president’s nominees for the 19 cabinet posts have still to be endorsed by the hard-line Majlis (parliament), where serious splits have already emerged over Pezeshkian’s supposedly pro-western approach.
The newly inaugurated president is, of course, slavishly following the line of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, desperately wooing western nations into lifting sanctions and reinstating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Western sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy and dramatically reduced its ability to fund Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shi’ia militias in Iraq, the terrorist Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Restoring the defunct nuclear deal would once again provide cover for the regime’s clandestine project to produce a nuclear weapon, while bestowing leverage on the mullahs’ demands for an end to sanctions.
The hollowness of Pezeshkian’s claims of moderation have been repeatedly revealed. In the first week of August, the terrorist Assadollah Assadi, released from 20-years imprisonment in Belgium in a disgraceful hostage swap deal, was interviewed on state-run TV networks in Iran. He boasted how the regime’s former hard-line president – Ebrahim Raisi, the Butcher of Tehran, who was killed in a mysterious helicopter crash in May, ordered the arbitrary arrest of a Belgian citizen to use in the hostage swap deal. Assadi boasted that a young Belgian charity worker was falsely accused of espionage and sentenced to 40 years jail and 70 lashes, in a barefaced effort to blackmail the Belgian government into the prisoner-exchange arrangement. Assadi, a registered diplomat based in the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was caught red-handed by European intelligence agents as he passed a professionally constructed bomb to three co-conspirators and instructed them to detonate it at a huge Iranian opposition rally in Paris in June 2018. He was sentenced to the maximum 20 years jail term for terrorist offences.
Describing former president Raisi’s plot as “a significant achievement”, Assadi went on to portray himself as a victim of international politics, claiming that his arrest and conviction were part of a Belgian ploy to free their own so-called spy from Iranian custody. Despite being filmed by intelligence agents handing over the bomb in a Luxembourg pizza takeaway, Assadi asserted: “They falsely claimed that they found a bomb in my car, which caused my family to be shocked and surprised.” He claimed that his mission was purely diplomatic and that his arrest was a violation of international law. The Assadi interview once again served to highlight how the regime has become emboldened by the weakness of Western nations who surrender to Iranian hostage-taking and blackmail. The EU’s failed attempts at appeasement appear to have taught us no lessons in how to deal with this criminal government.
The EU, and possibly even Kamala Harris if she wins the US presidential election in November, will once again tread the treacherous path of appeasement, claiming that Pezeshkian is a moderate that the West can deal with. The fact that only two weeks ago the FBI arrested a Pakistani man with links to Iran, who was trying to arrange for a team of hitmen to target US politicians, proves that it is business as usual for the new Iranian president and his tactics of murder-for-hire. *Indeed, attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden by the Houthis have continued apace, with Iranian drones and missiles being used by the Yemeni rebels. There are also growing fears that the war in Gaza could escalate to engulf the whole of the Middle East, following the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, killed by an Israeli airstrike in Tehran, after attending the inauguration of President Pezeshkian. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sworn revenge and phone calls to Pezeshkian pleading for restraint from French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have been swiftly rebuffed. The US has warned that “a significant set of attacks” by Iran on Israel could occur imminently.
It is also business as usual as the mullahs ramp up the number of executions, in an attempt to spread fear and quell a further nationwide uprising that could drive them from power. Mass executions of prisoners, including the hanging of 26 men and 3 women on a single day – August 7, sent shockwaves across Iran, reminding the 85 million population that Pezeshkian is no moderate when it comes to dishing out death sentences. The Iranian people have suffered brutal tyranny under the Ayatollahs for the past 45 years and recent uprisings have ignited a lust for revenge by Khamenei, Pezeshkian and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) thugs. Not content with spreading conflict and chaos across the Middle East and terrorism across the world, the mullahs have now resorted to an unprecedented number of reprisal executions against their own citizens. Western appeasers should understand that no matter who is president of Iran, whether it be Hassan Rouhani, Ebrahim Raisi or now Masoud Pezeshkian, the regime cannot survive without killings, executions, repression and terror.
The Iranian regime was founded on torture, execution, massacre and genocide, and these elements are essential for its survival. Instead of following the failed policy of appeasement, the West must show their support for the courageous resistance units of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), who risk their lives daily to undermine and weaken the mullahs’ grasp on power. The MEK are the main democratic opposition movement who offer an alternative future for Iran of peace, justice, democracy, human rights, women’s rights, an end to the death penalty and an end to the nuclear threat. If the West falls for the Pezeshkian ruse by lifting sanctions and reinstating the nuclear deal, they will condemn Iran to decades more of tyranny and oppression.
Struan Stevenson is the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.