SENIOR FORMER U.S. OFFICIALS REJECT WAR WITH IRAN, URGE REACHING OUT TO THE IRANIAN PEOPLE, ORGANIZED OPPOSITION

Created: 26 July 2017

by Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

On the heels of the major gathering of the Iranian opposition in Paris on July 1, some thirty prominent American luminaries and former officials issued a joint 

statement expressing bipartisan support for the Iranian resistance and underscoring the need for a more firm approach towards Iran’s ruling clerics.Among the signatories were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The letter scolds the ruling clerics of Iran for causing regional instability, engaging in egregious human rights violations and exporting terrorism and extremism abroad. The high-profile personalities and former officials rejected the view that Iran’s political establishment can be reformed. “The hope of some Western governments was that time would lead to moderation by the Mullahs or to the emergence of a reformist faction that could challenge the dominance of the clerical regime. The reality has been far different,” they stated.

They added that the “Tehran regime is uniquely vulnerable,” citing chronic economic mismanagement and fierce power struggle within the regime. “Mounting popular discontent has increasingly become visible in public,” they added, citing growing socialcalls for accountability for the “mass executions of political opponents, including the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners with a majority of them from the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).”

The luminaries said a “viable organization” exists to change the clerical regime. “Underthe leadership of Maryam Rajavi, a Muslim woman standing for gender equality, which is an antidote to Islamic fundamentalism and extremism, it is working every day to bring about a tolerant, non-nuclear Iranian republic based on separation of religion and state, that will uphold the rights of all.”

They added, “The National Council of Resistance of Iran … has the vision, leadership and courage to lead the way to the creation of a new Iran.”They called on world governments to provide moral support to the Iranian people’s quest for freedom.

“The international community,” they said, “must meet its responsibility by condemning the Mullahs’ oppression and embracing the Iranian people’s aspirations for a free and prosperous Iran accepted and respected around the world.”

On July 1, more than 100,000 Iranian expatriates and their supporters from five continents gathered near Paris to voice support for regime change and the NCRI’s plan for a free Iran. Prior to the rally, hundreds of pictures and videos surfaced in Iran where young people wrote slogans and hanged posters in Tehran and other major Iranian cities in support of the Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi.

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originally published in the    huffingtonpost