EU Does the Right Thing. - Will U.S. Follow Suit and Take PMOI Off the Terror Blacklist?
Fox News, February 5, 2009
Alireza Jafarzadeh (Foreign Affairs Analyst)
Bowing to the definitive rulings of seven European high
courts and finally adhering to Europe’s long-held claim to
the rule of law, on Monday January 26, 2009, the 27-member
European Union removed Iran’s main opposition, the People’s
Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK), from its terror blacklist. The
EU decision sent shockwaves through Tehran’s leadership,
which had invested much of its diplomatic and economic
leverage over the past seven years in preventing the
de-listing of the PMOI. It marked a timely and significant
EU policy-correction toward the ayatollahs’ regime. And most
importantly, it can serve as an impetus for the ongoing Iran
policy review within President Obama’s administration.
In 2002, in continuation of its ill-advised policy of
“constructive engagement,” the European Union succumbed to
Tehran’s main demand for political suppression of the PMOI
and blacklisted the group. It was a futile bid to mollify
the ayatollahs, reflective of the EU’s insatiable appetite
for lucrative trade with Tehran. But the EU did much harm to
the international campaign against terrorism and extremism
when it turned the terror blacklist into a political
plaything.
Agence France Presse reported in October 2004 that the EU’s
so-called big three, France, Britain, and Germany, had
promised Tehran that they would continue to regard the PMOI
“as a terrorist organization” if Tehran agreed to continue
its nuclear talks with the EU-3. Well, the EU continued
blacklisting the PMOI, while Tehran pushed forward its
nuclear drive at full speed, using the talks as diplomatic
cover. According to The Wall Street Journal of May 8, 2008:
“Iranian officials have urged suppression of the MEK [PMOI]
in negotiations with Western governments over Tehran’s
nuclear program and other issues.”
It is now clear, the EU had pursued a counter-productive
policy by losing the only leverage it had over Tehran by
blacklisting Iran’s main opposition, and as a result,
restrained much of the opposition’s potential–to the benefit
of the Iranian regime. Therefore it was the ruling clerics
in Tehran that obtained leverage over the EU by getting
their main opposition blacklisted by the Europeans. In the
absence of any leverage over Tehran, with very concession
provided by the EU, Tehran got greedier and accelerated its
nuclear weapons program.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that European
courts could not find any evidence implicating the PMOI in
terrorism. It was never about terrorism. On December 4,
2008, the European Court of First Instance annulled for the
third time the EU’s decision to blacklist the group. The
decision was annulled both on procedural grounds and on the
basis of the EU’s failure to substantiate its allegations of
terrorism against Iran’s largest and most organized
opposition.
Fast forward to January 26, 2009: the foreign ministers of
the EU member states gathering in Brussels finally removed
the PMOI from their terror list. When news of the decision
to unshackle its arch-enemy in Europe leaked the week
before, Tehran pulled out all diplomatic, political and
economic stops, trying to avoid the inevitable.
A senior national security figure in Iran’s Parliament had
warned about the domino effect when the UK ended its
blacklisting of the group in 2008. Now Iran’s Supreme
National Security Council (SNSC) ordered its Foreign
Ministry and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) to
do whatever they could to block the move and force the EU to
defy the high court.
When enticement failed, Tehran officials threatened their
interlocutors in diplomatic encounters in Tehran and
European capitals with serious economic and political
consequences. Tehran also exerted maximum pressure on
European companies involved in lucrative contracts with
Iran, to in turn press their capitals “to be cautious in
removing the PMOI from the terrorist list.”
Reporting back to SNSC in mid-January (according to the
information obtained by the sources of the opposition’s
Parliament-in-exile, the National Council of Resistance of
Iran), Iran’s Foreign Ministry revealed its tactics. The
report reads in part, “To prevent removal of the group from
the EU terrorist list, all representative offices of the
Islamic Republic in European countries are currently active,
providing documents to the EU countries to prove that the
PMOI is terrorist. France has pledged to avert removal of
the PMOI from the terror list.”
The report adds, “Reports prepared by the intelligence
services in some European countries which indicate that the
PMOI is a terrorist organization are based on information we
have put together in Tehran and supplied to those
countries.”
The ayatollahs’ regime is caught up in political and
economic turmoil which, in anticipation of its upcoming
presidential elections, will only get worse. The latest
domestic crackdown, widespread student protests, and
escalating executions–many in public–all point to a regime
in a downward spiral. In these circumstances, lifting the
terrorist designation from a movement with proven
organizational prowess and a vast support network inside the
country poses an existential threat to the regime. Hence
their frantic reaction to the EU’s decision.
And here lies what could be the key component of a new Iran
policy. Now that it has become common knowledge that the
PMOI’s terror designation, both in Europe and the U.S., was
but a failed political ploy to cajole the ayatollahs into
“good behavior,” it is time for Washington to also lift this
unjust designation. Nothing would more signify genuine
change in the U.S.-Iran policy
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
