Pompeo Visit Acknowledges Opposition To Iran’s Regime – OpEd

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent meeting with Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi in Albania appears to be an important political development at a time when Iran’s nuclear negotiations have stalled, and its regime is facing angry uprisings in its cities.

“In the end, the Iranian people will have a secular, democratic, non-nuclear Republic. I pray that this day will come soon and with the support of Iranians living all around the world—and those who resist from within—that day will come sooner. I am committed to this cause; I know you all are too,” Pompeo said May 16 when he met Mrs. Rajavi at the Ashraf 3 complex in Albania, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

Iran and its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are at a crossroads in this round of nuclear negotiations. Its choice is to either pursue Islamism—i.e., continue trying to build a nuclear bomb while exerting terrorism and regional influence on its neighbors—or prioritize the interests of Iran’s people over Islamism and revive Iran’s collapsed economy and eradicate the poverty that plagues more than 80% of Iran’s people.

So far, the Iranian regime has clearly chosen the first path, and it is naive to think the Iranian regime will stop trying to build an atomic bomb. Khamenei and regime leaders are trying to handle their economic mess—they have removed subsidies to fund terrorism and their militias abroad like Hezbollah, who continue to receive their salaries in dollars. They are allocating payments to the poor, but by printing unsupported banknotes, they have created unprecedented inflation and high prices, making it very difficult for millions of people to buy a piece of bread.

Poverty has reached unprecedented levels in Iran’s history. At least 80% of the population lives below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi claims that oil sales have doubled, so there is no need to worry about foreign exchange reserves and stockpiling of commodities. Khamenei has also resorted to various tricks to prevent an uprising like the one in mid-February 2019, stating that inflation is the result of the mafia and errant people and—even as some clerics say—”bad hijab” or improperly covered women.

Pompeo’s visit to Ashraf 3, the headquarters of the Iranian opposition, can be seen as a kind of recognition of the democratic alternative led by Mrs. Rajavi. Moreover, the prospect of Republican victories in upcoming US elections cannot be ignored. However, let us not forget that the Iranian regime is already the first to “give the address of”—identify—its alternative.

Three times in recent years, the Iranian theocracy has tried to assassinate Mrs. Rajavi. Notably, in June 2018, it conducted a bomb attack on the gathering of Iranian resistance, led by Mrs. Rajavi, in Villepinte, near Paris. Another attack was with a car bomb in Albania. In these ways, the Iranian regime reveals its fear of an alternative government led by a woman. The regime is infamous for suppressing women, forbidding them from serving as judges or as a national president. It is not a coincidence that history may see a woman lifted up as the leader of Iran—the anthesis of the current regime. 

Earlier this month, on May 10, the Belgian Court of Appeal in Antwerp handed down a strong and unprecedented 20-year prison sentence to an Iranian diplomat and three regime intelligence agents who had planned to blow up the Villepinte resistance rally in 2018. The court said in its verdict that the Iranian team had conspired to eliminate Mrs. Rajavi. They determined that the highest officials of the Iranian regime had decided on this failed assassination attempt to preserve their regime.

Allies of Mrs. Rajavi have taken over the streets of Iran, according to the intelligence community close to the regime. The resistance units of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq/People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK/PMOI) are expanding. MEK resistance units support Mrs. Rajavi’s 10-point plan—which stresses equality of men and women, and separation of religion and government—and that is the reason why the streets are in her hands. 

Iran’s regime knows that she and the resistance units are in an angry outburst, putting democratic change before this regime. In a highly symbolic and well-received act, the resistance units set fire to a newly erected statue of Qassem Soleimani, an icon of Iran’s tyrannical regional influence. Later, in the most important television broadcast, resistance units co-opted national news stations and showed the public images of resistance leaders on the national television network. The imprisonment, torture and execution of many members of the resistance units did not stop them from multiplying as a force. It is these resistance units that support the teachers’ protests and other demonstrations despite the security measures, and in the uprising of mid-November 2019, they pushed the explosion of the people’s anger to the edge of democratic change.

With a brilliant resistance, Ukraine is the shield of Europe against Putin’s Russia. For 40 years, the Iranian resistance, with 30,000 political prisoners massacred and more than 100,000 fallen for freedom, has been a shield against the establishment of the fundamentalist and brutal empire that Islamist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini once dreamed of.

Just as the Ukrainian resistance has been universally supported, so must be the Iranian resistance. Pompeo’s visit to Mrs. Rajavi in Albania is a greeting to the Iranian alternative and at the same time, a clear and decisive step towards the eradication of Islamic fundamentalism.

*Saeed Abed, is a Member of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee, Human Rights Activist, Expert on Iran, and the Middle East