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The Belgian parliament has an important decision to make on Thursday

As the Belgian parliament prepares to vote on a bill that will legalize prisoner swaps with the Iranian regime, Europe’s security and the security of thousands of Iranian dissidents hang in the balance. Should the bill be ratified, Assadollah Assadi, a convicted diplomat terrorist who was caught red-handed as he tried to bomb a large rally of the Iranian Resistance in Paris in 2018, will be returned to Iran in exchange for a Belgian national who has been held hostage by Tehran.

While thousands of Iranians, politicians, lawmakers and other dignitaries from around the world have expressed outrage at this shameful submission to the Iranian regime’s blackmailing tactics, the proponents of the deal, Belgian officials of the Vivaldi government coalition, argue that if the agreement is not ratified by the parliament, the lives of Belgian hostages are at stake. Meanwhile, other European states, who also have their nationals held hostage in Iran, have remained eerily silent on the deal, implicitly giving their consent to the deal, and hoping that the treaty will set a precedent for them too to negotiate the release of their hostages.

 

But is this deal a final answer to Tehran’s hostage-taking policy? Will such a deal convince the mullahs’ regime to no longer arrest and incarcerate foreign nationals for dubious and often outrageous charges? What is past is prologue. There’s no sign that giving the mullahs more concession on their terrorism and hostage-taking policies will pacify them.

A quick look at the past weeks alone gives us a clear picture of what will happen if Belgium carries out its disgraceful deal with Tehran:

  • On July 7, Polish officials confirmed that Maciej Walczak, a professor at Copernicus University in Poland, had been arrested and detained by Iranian authorities. According to Polish authorities, Walczak was put on trial and sentenced to three years in prison on unknown charges.
  • On July 6, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reported having detained several foreigners, including Britain’s second most senior envoy in Tehran, for alleged acts of spying such as taking soil samples in restricted areas. The claim was later denied by UK officials.
  • In May, as a Swedish court held the final sessions of the trial of Hamid Noury, an ex-prison official in Iran’s Gohardasht prison and the executioner of thousands of political prisoners during the 1988 massacre, the Iranian regime’s judiciary declared that the death sentence of Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish professor held hostage by Iranian authorities, had been confirmed. Iran’s regime demanded the immediate release of Noury and his return to Iran.
  • At the same time, the regime shows no sign of toning down its terrorist activities in the region. On July 7, Britain’s Royal Navy said one of its warships had seized Iranian weapons, including surface-to-air missiles and engines for cruise missiles, from smugglers in international waters south of Iran early this year.

These facts in no way indicate that the regime intends to stop its provocative and belligerent stance toward global peace and security.

Should the deal be approved, the prisoner swap treaty will give the regime a carte blanche and a channel to scale its hostage-taking and global terrorism policies.

Iran-backed terrorists will be able to travel to any European country and carry out terrorist activities. Should they get caught and arrested, they will have nothing to worry about because the regime is stockpiling foreign hostages just as it is stockpiling enriched uranium. Their release will be facilitated, and they will be returned to Iran, where they will be greeted as heroes, not criminals.

This is the kind of dynamics that the Belgian government is setting in motion with the disgraceful deal that it has pushed for ratification in the Chamber of Representatives.

On Thursday, the Belgian parliament will make a key decision. Either it will reject the bill, protect the rule of law, and take one of the many steps needed to shut down the Iranian regime’s terrorist operations in Europe. Or it will approve the bill and open the floodgates of terrorism on European soil.

 

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