Democracy For Iran, Security For America: Mullahs Must Go
By The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (12/02/04)
As several thousands die-hard supporters of the Iranian theocracy were marking the 25th anniversary of taking 52 Americans hostage in Tehran on November 3, President George W. Bush was re-elected.
As expected, the Iranian state-run press decried Mr. Bush’s re-election as a “victory for violence and for Zionists”. "The United States is intrinsically opposed to the Islamic republic on matters such as Israel, the Middle East peace process, nuclear technology, human rights and democracy," wrote the Siassat Rouz daily. The paper, anticipating a more vigorous campaign by Washington in support of democracy movement in Iran, added that it expected "new hostile measures and new accusations from the United States".
A majority of Iranians, however, had a totally different view of the November elections, hoping that it would signal a new beginning marked by adopting a firm Iran policy in support of their movement for a secular democracy.
Ironically, it was the faithful 444-day-long occupation of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, which introduced America to the evil of the fundamentalist inspired terrorism. This menace plagued the world ever since and culminated in the September 11 tragedy.
The 1983 suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Riyadh, the 1994 explosion of the Jewish community center in Argentina and hundreds of terrorist assaults on Iranian dissidents abroad were part of Khomeini’s war on the free world.
Referring to the 1983 Beirut bombing, Iran’s former minister of the Revolutionary Guards said in the early 1990s that Tehran had provided “both the T.N.T. and the ideology” for the operation.
Years of appeasement, cloaked under the banner of constructive engagement, or the less-than adequate containment policy, contributed to the spread of Tehran-inspired terrorism as the mullahs soon realized that by continuing their rogue behavior they could gain diplomatic and strategic windfalls.
It is no wonder that even today Tehran is complaining it has not been adequately rewarded for its terrorist actions. On November 3, Hossein Mousavian, a top security official in Tehran said, "We showed goodwill and helped release the hostages [in Lebanon], but America reneged on its promises." Translation: we ordered our terrorist proxies, the very same ones we had directed to take American hostage, to release them but we have not been rewarded.
The absence of a coherent and firm policy toward Tehran in the past two decades explains why the mullahs embarked on running a very sophisticated clandestine nuclear weapons program in the mid-1980s. Then, warnings from nuclear proliferation experts and the Iranian opposition about Tehran’s menacing nuclear intentions went unheeded, prompting the clerical regime to continue with its secret nuclear program.
Now, as the world is faced with the specter of the most active sponsor of terror going nuclear, the European Union, in a triumph of naiveté over common sense, has again granted incentives and compromise to Iran.
On this side of the Atlantic, the expectation is that the re-election of President Bush would herald a marked departure from the “engagement” policy – a legacy of the Clinton administration – still lurking within our foreign policy-making circles.
On November 2, majority of Americans declared their support for President Bush’s vision that expansion of democracy in the Middle East, particularly in countries under totalitarian rule such as Iran, remained at the core of the war on terror and that nuclear proliferation by rogue regimes was unacceptable.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Bush said, “For too long, American policy looked away while men and women were oppressed, their rights ignored and their hopes stifled. And that era is over”. Now that he is re-elected, he ought to put the diplomatic and political weight of the United States behind the democracy movement in Iran that is working to unseat the ruling tyranny.
Iranians are hopeful that America would no longer “look away” when it comes to their struggle against the religious dictatorship in Iran, opting instead to stand by the people and the anti-fundamentalist democratic opposition there.
Strategically speaking, this would be the only effective “stick” available to Washington as it tries to cope with Iran’s nuclear campaign.
For the next four years, “democracy for Iran, security for America” should be the guiding light of our policy towards the terrorists who are running Iran.
The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (www.usadiran.org), is a US-based, independent, non-profit policy advocacy organization, which aims to advance a US policy in support of Iranian people’s aspirations for a democratic, secular, and peaceful government. The USADI is not affiliated with any government agencies, political groups or parties.
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