During the U.S. presidential campaigns, both candidates, Democrat and Republican, attacked the religious regime of Iran and showed their disparity with the mullahs’ foreign policies. As a major threat to world peace and security, the Iranian regime has been an important subject in election debates on both sides of the Atlantic.
How the ayatollahs manage to maintain power and shield themselves form internal upheavals depends on their aggressiveness. Therefore, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will have a hard job combating the threats this regime poses to its neighbors, in addition to Europe and the United States.
The Iranian regime already sounds alarm bells for many countries. Its misbehaviors in the past one or two decades has made it distrusted.
Frustration toward this fundamentalist regime is now worldwide. This unanimity has been reflected in a recent UN resolution condemning Iran’s flagrant human rights violations, mainly the high rate of executions, its discrimination policy against minorities and the violation of women’s rights.
The resolution calls on Iran to satisfy its obligations specified in human rights treaties Iran is a signatory of 85 UN members voting in support of the resolution included Chile, the U.K., U.S., Japan and Hungary. They hope the resolution will push Tehran to enhance human rights conditions and guarantee democratic rights for its citizens. The General Assembly urges Iran to guarantee freedom of speech and holding assemblies, curb discrimination and other violations against women and minorities, according to the resolution.
Prior to this, European countries called on Iran to oversee human rights regulations for its citizens. “Iran has the highest level of death-penalty executions per capita in the world,” said a statement released by European Union. The bloc has placed several conditions on normalizing ties with Iran. They include, in part, the release of political prisoners, implementing human rights regulations, end supporting regional terrorist groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and practice transparency in relation to the Financial Investigative Task Force.
Iran, as major threat to the world, was also a major issue discussed in the U.S. elections debates.
“I support calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard what it is, a terrorist organization. It is imperative that we get both tough and smart about dealing with Iran before it is too late,” Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton said. “They continue to destabilize governments in the Middle East, they continue to support proxies and terrorist groups like Hezbollah.”
Likewise, in his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly criticized the insufficient nature of the final nuclear deal with Iran. He also threatened to walk away from the agreement.
The Saudi representative to the UN reverberated the frustration in the Middle East when he said the Kingdom used to abstain from voting but this time it votes in favor as an appreciation to the Iranian people.
The time has come for meaningful measures against global terrorism and extremism. In recent years in United States and Europe, as well as in Iran, Iraq, Syria and beyond we have witnessed innocent lives lost for letting the monster of Islamic fundamentalism go free.
The U.S. government, in the past decade, has failed to contain Iranian regime, or as the Iranian opposition calls it, the “Godfather of terrorism.” It is time to put first the question of why a regime such as Iran is permitted to use people’s lives as means to maintain its power.
It is time to stand alongside the Iranian people, and not the Ayatollahs and their war mongering machine. Iran’s opposition, in particular the MEK and the Iranian people deserve the West’s support in their struggle against mullahs’ terrorism. They deserve to have a democratic, peaceful society.
The recent UN resolution, the conditions set forth by the European Union, and the cries of the people of Iran and the rest of the Middle East suggest that President-elect Donald Trump should move to correct the past mistakes of U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran.
