Lord Maginnis: The West must listen and act regards to Iran regime human rights abuses

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, a prominent member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom (BPCIF), wrote an article calling on the West to act in the face of the Iranian regime.

He said that American policy has sought to compromise with an Iran that is supposedly moderate for the past 37 years. It started with President Reagan who exchanged arms for American hostages. The Clinton administration then made the situation worse by calling the main opposition a terrorist organisation. Now the Obama administration is endorsing a dubious nuclear agreement. Last year, 1.7 billion dollars in “ransom” was paid for Americans being held prisoner in Iran last year.

Despite this, there has been some progress, he explains. Hillary Clinton corrected the mistake of President Clinton by removing the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) from the terrorist list. Earlier this year, the US Secretary of State visited Albania and offered support for the MEK members who had been left for years in Camp Liberty, Iraq.

 So there is certainly progress, but there is still a long way to go. The U.S., Lord Maginnis explains, can and should do more. He said that “realistic attention to Iranian human rights issues in general has surely to be a priority!” However, this has not been the case in recent years. The nuclear deal signed with Iran last year has only distracted the world from the human rights abuses that continue.

“Such distraction is indicative of the fact that the larger problem remains: the US and its allies still maintain an unjustifiably optimistic attitude view of the prospects for internal change in the Iranian regime. The nuclear agreement itself was regarded in some circles as a victory for moderation, having been spearheaded on the Iranian side by President Hassan Rouhani. But in the three years that he has held office, Rouhani’s alleged moderate credentials have repeatedly been shown to be an illusion. Under his leadership, the death penalty has spiked to levels not seen in the past 25 years.”

 Lord Maginnis highlights that the officials in Iran who were involved in the decision-making of the 1988 massacre in which 30,000 people were executed are still in power. The recording that was released earlier this year “underscores the fact that some of the architects of the massacre sought to execute anyone who expressed the least sympathy with the Iranian resistance, even those who simply read MEK newspapers or magazines”.

“The West should have learned from its mistakes regarding its compromising and immoral Iranian policy long ago. It really shouldn’t have required decades of advocacy by the Iranian resistance to unmask a regime that’s rotten to the core. Our relationship with the PMOI had to change for the better before our understanding of the regime did the same. Fortunately, that appears to be happening at last.”

Lord Maginnis hopes that the truth and extent of the regime’s crimes will finally emerge now that the U.S. is becoming involved in the process of relocating the MEK. He said that what is happening is “under-reported by the free world’s press” and hopefully Western Governments “will no longer seek to conceal the atrocities of the Republic of Iran”.