On December 3, agents of Iran’s regime attacked and set fire to the office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Berlin. Fortunately, the occupants intervened and prevented the fire from spreading across the building. The incident is currently being investigated by the German police as a possible terrorist attack.
This comes in continuation of a series of terrorist activities by Iran’s regime against the Iranian Resistance and its supporters in the past year. On May 31 and June 11, 2023, agents of the regime’s terrorist IRGC Quds Force attacked a building belonging to the supporters of the Iranian Resistance with firearms and incendiary material.
The uptick in the regime’s terrorist activities against the Iranian Resistance comes against the backdrop of a series of concessions made by the West to the regime, including the release of its terrorist diplomat Assadollah Assadi. Assadi, a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, was arrested in 2018 as he was trying to bomb the annual gathering of the Iranian Resistance in Villepinte, near Paris. He had used his diplomatic cover and facilities to transfer the bomb from Tehran to Europe. And he had used his network of terrorists and spies, again facilitated by the regime’s diplomatic apparatus, to orchestrate the attack. Assadi and his three cohorts were sentenced to long prison sentences by a court in Antwerp, Belgium.
However, on May 26, the government of Belgium released Assadi and returned him to Iran in a prisoner swap that involved dual national citizens held as hostages by Tehran. At the time, the NCRI warned that the release of Assadi “is a shameful ransom for terrorism and hostage-taking. This will embolden the religious fascism ruling Iran to continue its crimes in Iran through repression and regional and international terrorism.”
In retrospect, it has become evident how well-placed those warnings were. The regime has not only directed its attack at Iranian dissidents but also the supporters of the Iranian Resistance. The recent assassination attempt against Dr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, the former Vice President of the European Parliament and a staunch supporter of the Iranian people’s support for freedom, is currently being investigated, with Tehran being a prime suspect.
And in face of the West’s continued reluctance to confront the regime for its provocative behavior, the regime continues its terrorist activities in the Middle East region and fans the flames of war in the region to maintain its hold on power.
Terrorism is the main component of the foreign policy of Iran’s regime. In the past four decades, the regime has used its embassies and diplomatic apparatus to carry out terrorist activities. Numerous innocents have fallen victim to the regime’s terrorist machinations.
The Iranian regime’s former foreign minister Javad Zarif explicitly acknowledged in 2021 that the foreign ministry and the Quds Force closely coordinated and communicated their actions. In this light, the fact that Assadi, who was a career diplomat, was also a Quds Force agent is no surprise. Neither is the fact that the regime’s current FM Hossein Amir Abdollahian had very close ties to Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force and the mastermind of the regime’s terror operations.
The attack against the office of NCRI in Berlin is just prelude of what can happen when you try to address the Iranian regime’s terrorist threats through concessions and by turning a blind eye. Today, the Iranian regime is a domestic, regional, and global threat.
The international community must urgently address this threat. Fortunately, the Iranian Resistance has been providing a blueprint for dealing with the regime’s terrorism for years. It starts with closing down the regime’s embassies and diplomatic facilities, expelling all its agents and lobbies, and proscribing the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) as terrorist organizations. This will send a strong message to the current and potential mercenaries that the regime employs to do its dirty work. This policy must be complemented by the full backing of the Iranian people’s desires for democratic regime change and the establishment of a democratic republic in their country. The people of Iran are the ultimate ally of the world in countering the regime’s terrorism. Accordingly, they and their resistance movement deserve support in their decades-long struggle to overthrow the mullahs’ regime.