Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, May 21, 2020—Through the so-called election of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 as the president of the Iranian regime, the regime in Iran attempted to portray him as a moderate to the West. His history of horrible crimes, however, paints a different picture.
Since the beginning of the anti-monarchial revolution in February 1979, by being a key figure in the mullahs’ regime, Hassan Rouhani has been complicit and one of the perpetrators in the crimes against the people of Iran, regional countries and global peace.
While he was invited many times to the United Nations, he should be held accountable in international courts for crimes against humanity. A short look at his criminal record figures indicates is a deceiver.
For many years, Rouhani served in the highest posts of the Islamic Republic, including:
Member of the Majlis (regime parliament) following the regime’s foundation, and thus appointed to various security posts.
Member of the Supreme Defense Council from 1982 to 1988
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Supreme Defense Council from 1986 to 1988
Deputy commander of the war with Iraq from 1983 to 1985
Chief of staff at Fort Khatam al-Anbia, one of the Revolutionary Guards’ covert institutions for financing terrorism, from 1985 to 1988
Former Iranian regime president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2011, once acknowledged that over 450,000 students were sent to clear minefields and used as cannon-fodders.
There was also $1 trillion of material damage, estimated to be more than three times the value of Iran’s oil revenues during the 20th century.
Hassan Rouhani was a senior official during the Iran-Iraq War that the regime continued for many years back in the 1980s
Even after the Iran-Iraq war, Rouhani held senior security and government positions:
-Khamenei’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council from 1988 to 2013
-National Security Advisor to then president Rafsanjani from 1988 to 1997
-National Security Advisor of regime president Mohammad Khatami from 2000 to 2005
During the 1999 students uprising, Rouhani was Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and played a major role in the crackdown targeting the protesting nation.
While calling students “thugs,” “corrupt” and “spiteful,” Rouhani said in his speech on July 14, 1999, at the end of a regime-orchestrated rally against the students: “Yesterday, a decisive order was issued against these elements, and yesterday evening, a decisive order was issued so that any movement of these opportunistic elements, wherever they may be, be dealt with severely and suppressively.”
It is worth noting that the regime’s Supreme Security Council also decides on many terrorist attacks across the globe, including:
Assassination of senior Kurdish dissident Abdul Rahman Qasemlou—July 13, 1989
Assassination of Dr. Kazem Rajavi, Iran’s former ambassador to the UN in Geneva—April 4, 1990
Assassination of Iranian dissident Abdurrahman Boroumand—April 18, 1991
Assassination of former Iranian prime minister Shapur Bakhtiar—August 6, 1991
Assassination of Iranian artist/dissident Fereydoon Farrokhzad—August 8, 1992
Assassination of Mustafa Sharafkandi, Secretary General of Iran Kurdistan Democratic Party—September 17, 1992
Bombing of AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina—July 18, 1994
Assassination of Iranian dissident Reza Mazlouman—May 27, 1996
Bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia—June 25, 1996
Rouhani chaired the Expediency Council’s Political-Security and Defense Commission from 1991 to 2017.
After becoming the regime’s president in 2013, Rouhani oversaw the execution of more than 3,800 people to this day.
Since July 1980, Rouhani has been calling for the public execution of political dissidents in Friday prayers.
“Just as we punish adulteries in public so that everyone would witness their suffering, we should hang political dissidents during the Friday prayers to have more impact on the society,” he famously said.
Despite Rouhani’s self-satisfaction of being a moderate, he was the first official to force women to wear headscarves at work. “I ordered all the women to wear a headscarf at work… I issued an ultimatum that no woman is allowed to come to work without a headscarf… The women protested and shouted. Someone said it’s impossible… I stood firm and obligated them to wear it at work,” he proudly recalled in an interview.
Meanwhile, in 1988, during the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), he served in important government posts and was involved in this horrific crime against humanity, described as the largest massacre and genocide after World War II.
The clerical regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa in July 1988 ordering the execution of imprisoned dissidents, including those who had already been tried and were serving their prison terms.
Khomeini’s decree called for the execution of all political prisoners affiliated to the PMOI/MEK who remained loyal to the organization.
The decree reads: “As the treacherous Monafeqin [PMOI] do not believe in Islam and what they say is out of deception and hypocrisy, and as their leaders have confessed that they have become renegades, and as they are waging war on God, and…. It is decreed that those who are in prison throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the Monafeqin [PMOI] are waging war on God and are condemned to execution.”
It is a crime that all the factions of the theocratic regime ruling Iran took part in.
Under Rouhani’s supervision, the mullahs’ regime has carried out more than 130 terrorist attack abroad against Iranian Resistance members. This included missile/rocket attacks against the MEK members in Camp Liberty, Iraq, of which the most lethal took place on October 29, 2011, when a missile attack left 23 camp residents dead.
In early 2020, Rouhani praised the Revolutionary Guards for downing a U.S. drone.
“We hit the drone with an indigenous Iranian system”
The missile is made by Iran, its radar is made by Iran… we tracked [the drone] with our Iranian radar, we locked on it with our Iranian radar, we targeted it with our Iranian missile … We kiss the hands of all those who launched this domestic industry in our Defense Ministry, the hands of all who used this tool well in the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC),” Rouhani said.
Rouhani also praised the terrorist IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in January 2020.
“Today, if we look at every corner in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, everywhere, we see the footprint of Commander [Qassem] Soleimani’s bravery,” Rouhani said on May 10, 2016, adding that IRGC is “present to defend our holy shrines in Iraq and Syria, to defend the oppressed in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, and other places that request assistance from the Iranian people and the Iranian government.” (Tasnim news agency—May 10, 2016).
Rouhani also defended the production of weapons of mass destruction.
“We built, are building now, and will build missiles… We do not hesitate to build, manufacture, store, and use them when necessary to defend ourselves, any weapons of any kind that we need,” Rouhani said on October 29, 2017, in the regime’s parliament. He added that the U.S. disrupted security in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the stability and security of Afghanistan, and wanted to “break down Iraq”, adding the regime “went to help the Iraqi people, to help the Syrian people, and we did not allow the territorial integrity of Iraq to be undermined.”
Rouhani was the “velvet glove” of the regime’s “Iron Hand” that has executed over 120,000 political prisoners, adopted terrorism as its standard foreign policy, has not stopped for a minute during all these years from fanning the flames of war across the Middle East region, and attempted to build and acquire of mass destructive.
Gross human rights violations have increased during Rouhani’s tenure, including the execution of at least 3,800 people. This ranks Iran second in the world in the number of people executed, and first in terms of the number of executions per capita.
During the November 2019 nationwide uprising over 1,500 were killed by security forces, plainclothes agents and the IRGC. Over 8,000 were wounded and at least 12,000 arrested and detained. Still many cases have not been registered due to massive repression despite the vicious slaughtering of protesters. At the same time, security forces threaten families and force them into signing written pledges not to hold funeral ceremonies for their loved ones and refrain from talking about the reason for their deaths, especially to the media.
On January 10, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 was targeted by IRGC missiles, killing all 176 passengers and crew after the regime had lost its chief terrorist Qassem Soleimani.
During the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran, while over 43,100 people have died in 31 provinces of Iran as of May 21, in fear of nationwide protests, Rouhani continues to cloak the true number of coronavirus deaths and cases.
While the regime’s Health Minister has acknowledged that the virus outbreak in Iran was discovered back in mid-January and he had alerted top officials about it, they ignored warnings and deliberately misled the public on the existence of the virus, and the number of cases and deaths, all to prevent any impact on their orchestrated 1979 anniversary march and the February 21 sham Majlis (parliament) elections, and thus maintaining their regime in power.
Rouhani said on February 26: “We will not decrease or increase the current statistics! If anyone dies of this disease, we will let the people know, but everyday people naturally die in all cities. Some die because of the flu, some die of influenza… We must not connect these cases to the novel coronavirus.”
In fear of nationwide protests, the regime ruling Iran continues to cover up the true number of coronavirus deaths and cases.
Iranian opposition President Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said, “One cannot deceive the public by engineering the figures, just as the Iranian people did not believe Rouhani’s claim that he had not been aware of the virus’ spread into Iran until February 19, 2020.”
“The reality is that it is a very hard time for the Iranian people, and the inhuman regime wants to use the coronavirus outbreak as an instrument to maintain its rule. But the people of Iran want to get rid of the regime. Their desire is peace, freedom, democracy, and welfare, Mrs. Rajavi emphasized. “The clerical regime did not face any obstacles or prohibitions in purchasing or importing medicine or medical equipment, but instead of being concerned about people’s lives, they are rather concerned about sanctions imposed on their own money. The spring of Iran’s freedom will be realized by us and by our own hands. It will never come for free. If we want it, we can and must achieve it. This is the test, the duty and the responsibility of each and every one of us.”
