By Shahin Ghobadi
THE SACRAMENTO BEE, Paris , 12 January 2011 — On Dec. 31, 1977, in our middle-class home in western Tehran, I was watching the Shah’s state dinner for President Jimmy Carter. For me, who had learned something about the U.S. political system as a curious tourist to America the previous summer, Carter’s speech was interesting.
When Carter called Iran ’an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world,’ I looked questioningly at my uncle, who was back in Iran after years in California, and said, ’Where is he talking about? Americans really don’t know what is going on in Iran?’
My uncle tried to convince me that the president of the strongest country in the world definitely knew things that an Iranian teenager did not. After a heated argument, neither of us was convinced.
That autumn, I had witnessed anti-government demonstrations by university and high-school students. I will never forget the first time I heard the chant ’down with the Shah’ in the streets of central Tehran.
Thirty-three years later, as an anti-mullah political activist, I still follow U.S. policy. While I still cannot figure it out, I am sure that U.S. policy-makers are utterly confused when it comes to Iran.
In my first days in Washington in July 1985, I went to the capitol. At a hearing of the House subcommittee on Near-Eastern Affairs, Richard Murphy, then assistant secretary of state for the Near East, told congressmen he wanted to provide unsolicited information about the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), the principal Iranian opposition organization. He leveled several allegations against the PMOI, including involvement in terrorism. I could not believe my ears and whispered to my colleague, ’Did you expect this?’
The next year, after the revelations of the Iran-Contra scandal, it became clear that the branding of the PMOI was part of a calculated scheme by the State Department to appease the ruling mullahs.
Fast-forward a quarter-century.
Anxiety about Iranian intentions permeates the Middle East. The concern is not limited to Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, but also to its brutal and systematic violations of human rights, its support for extremist and Islamic fundamentalist groups and its attempts to interfere in the affairs of Iraq and other countries.
Of the foreign-policy challenges facing the U.S. in 2011, Iran is up there.
The Obama administration tried to jump-start Iran policy with another round in the failed policy of engagement. Deja vu. Once again, it was shown that the notion that direct talks might bring rewards was a mirage.
Very few believe the sanctions imposed on Tehran by the U.N. Security Council or even the touted new round of coordinated U.S. and European Union sanctions can cause a major policy shift.
As former Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge underlined at an international seminar on Iran in Paris on Dec. 22, time is not an ally when it comes to preventing the tyrannical regime in Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Frances Townsend, a former U.S. presidential advisor on counter-terrorism, underscored that what is called the containment policy on Iran is a smokescreen for the failed policy of appeasement.
But the alternative to appeasement is not military intervention.
As Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the Iranian Resistance, has reiterated, the Iranian crisis has an Iranian solution: democratic change by Iranians and their organized resistance. Uprisings in Iran in 2009 and 2010 proved its plausibility. But the U.S. should at least remove the restrictions it has placed on the PMOI as part of its dealings with Tehran.
All the participants in the Paris conference, including former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, agreed that the U.S. had blacklisted the PMOI as part of deal-making with Tehran. That was a huge moral and political mistake. As former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani put it, for the ’PMOI to be described as a terrorist organization is just a disgrace.’
The PMOI ceased military operations in 2001 and voluntarily disarmed in 2003. Nine U.S. security agencies confirm that more than 3,400 PMOI members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, have no link to terrorism.
The PMOI has in fact served as the world’s eyes and ears by exposing the mullahs’ clandestine nuclear weapons program for eight years.
More than 110 members of the House of Representatives called in a bipartisan resolution for the removal of the PMOI from the blacklist. This came after a ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court in July remanding the case to the State Department for a review.
Inclusion is not abstract. It has been an enabler for the regime to suppress and kill demonstrators as ’Mohareb’ (enemy of God) and has provided an excuse to pressure and suppress Ashraf residents. Ali Saremi, Iran’s most prominent political prisoner and an activist of the PMOI was hanged as a Mohareb in Tehran on Dec 28.
As millions cry for freedom in Iran, by removing the terror tag from the most organized opposition group, the U.S. could allow the dynamics of Iranian politics to play themselves out. This is exactly what rattles the mullahs.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Shahin Gobadi is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the coalition of Iranian opposition groups. Readers may send him e-mail at shahin.gobadi@ncr-iran.org.
