Iran, is waging war the only way?

Nima Sharif

There is a lot of talk and concern expressed recently in the news media about a possible war against Iran.  While the concerns are real, and I share in those concerns; there is one important aspect that should not be ignored.  It is important that in avoiding war we be careful not to fall for the ploys of an Islamic fascist dictator in Iran who is trying to use our peaceful aspirations to buy time to proceed with his own evil plans.

We live at a critical period in history.  What we choose to do can on the one hand bring peace and freedom to the whole world, including the Middle East or it can give way to the likes of another Hitler left free to do the unthinkable. Very soon we – the supporters of peace — will be forced into another war similar to World War II or even worse.

Today a fine hairline separates the realistic pursuit for peace and what would practically be a surrender to fundamentalist terrorists in Iran.

For the past 27 years, the policy of the West toward the mullahs ruling Iran has been a policy of appeasement.  It has been called a “carrot and stick” policy, which during Khatami’s reign, the former president of the theocracy in Iran, was called “Critical Dialog” by the Europeans. Of course Khatami himself used to call it the “Dialog of Civilizations.”

The policy was designed to use economical and political incentives to encourage the Iranians to come to the negotiating table where reason would hopefully prevail.

When the Iranian Resistance movement, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), exposed Iran’s nuclear program in 2003, the West began to realize how it had been taken in by the mullahs.  The policy that was supposed to encourage the mullahs to meet the West half-way, when they were happy for even much less than that, apparently had been used by the Iranian mullahs to cover-up an extensive 18-year-old program of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The policy of “never ending talks” failed and the mullahs have finally closed that chapter. Iran now has reached the point of no return with its nuclear weapons program and is threatening the West with its “40,000 suicide bombers” and frequent calls to wipeout Israel. 
Today any policy short of a firm stand against the clerics ruling the country would simply provide them the little time they need to complete their work and arm them with the bomb.  Continuing the old, imprudent policies would simply lead to disaster.

So what should we do?  Start another war before the mullahs acquire the nukes?  Is war the only way to save the world from this imminent danger?

During all the years of playing hide and seek, the Iranian regime has only had one precondition to sit at the negotiating table and that has been for the West to strap down and immobilize the Iranian dissident movement for freedom and more specifically the Iranian Resistance (NCRI).  This was while the regime open handedly used political assassination and terror against its opponents throughout Europe and even the US.

For the past 27 years the mullahs have managed to assassinate many of their opponents. During these years any attempt by the victims or their families to prosecute the murderers have run into a deadlock in the West. Many times, the terrorists who had been arrested have been sent back to Iran. 

Two of the terrorists who took part in the political assassination of Dr. Kazem Rajavi (human rights activist and representative of the NCRI at the UN Geneva headquarters) in Switzerland were arrested in France only to be escorted on to a plane and returned to Iran.

At the same time, the most organized and by far the biggest Iranian resistance movement, the NCRI, which has been the main source of all information about regime’s nuclear program, has been listed as a terrorist organization in the US since 2003.  The Iranian Mujahedin Organization while all of their members have been screened one by one by the seven US agencies in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf many times over without finding a single terror link, are proscribed as a terrorist organization in the US and Europe.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI’s President-elect and the proponent of the “third option” for Iran, is still strapped down in Paris with limited travel permission.

The solution is at reach, but we have to move quickly or it will be too late.  There is no need to wage war on Iran and no need to continue to appease the mullahs’ and give in to their blackmail to let them continue their nuclear weapons program.  All we have to do is to let the Iranian people, and their Resistance movement, aspire to their inalienable right to rise up against a tyrannical regime in their country.

It is time for the policy of appeasement to be replaced by a realistic firm policy towards the mullahs to let them know that the world community no longer tolerates terrorism, totalitarianism, and fascism.

Such a policy will impose complete and total sanctions to cripple the regime in the continuation of its nuclear weapons endeavors and it’s meddling in Iraq.  This policy would also recognize the legitimate right of the Iranian people for striving for liberty by recognizing the Iranian resistance as it tries to bring about democratic change in that country which is long overdue and well awaited by the Iranian people.