EDITORIAL: Zarif’s designation is the last nail on the coffin of the moderate mullah myth

Last Thursday, the United States government imposed sanctions on the Iranian regime’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“Foreign Minister Zarif and the Foreign Ministry he runs take their direction from the Supreme Leader and his office. Foreign Minister Zarif is a key enabler of Ayatollah Khamenei’s policies throughout the region and around the world,” said the statement by the U.S. State Department.

For four decades, the Iranian Resistance has emphasized that there are no so-called ‘moderates’ or ‘reformists’ in Iran’s fascist dictatorship. Now, after 40 years of resistance and perseverance by the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance, and after continuous and relentless revelations by the latter, the world has realized that behind these smokescreens is nothing but the wicked nature of the system of Velayat-e Faqih (absolute religious rule).

After exhausting all its options with Iran’s regime, and after the terrible mistakes of previous administrations, the U.S. has finally and inevitably come to see the real nature of this regime.

Zarif was the velvet glove over the iron hand of the criminal regime, which has executed 120,000 political prisoners, adopted terrorism as its standard foreign policy, relentlessly fanned the flame of war in the region and tried to produce and acquire weapons of mass destruction. In all these years, Zarif’s role has been to justify and facilitate all these criminal policies. He played a key role in convincing the Europe Union and the U.S. to unlawfully designate the PMOI (MEK) as a terrorist organization (a designation which was lifted by the U.S. and European courts of appeal), and bomb MEK camps in the 2003 Iraq war. The Iranian regime’s ‘diplomats’ directly and indirectly had a key role in encouraging the U.S. to start that destructive war, which only had one winner, the mullahs’ regime.

“Javad Zarif oversees a foreign ministry that has coordinated with one of the Iranian regime’s most nefarious state entities, the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), which is designated pursuant to terrorism and human rights authorities,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said correctly in a statement.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton described Zarif as “con man,” “grifter” and “mouthpiece” of the illegitimate regime.

Zarif, who in nature is no different to Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, was portrayed as a ‘moderate’ and an ‘experienced diplomat’ by the former U.S. administration. Unfortunately, they credited Zarif with such titles after turning a blind eye to the regime’s crimes with the hope that it would mollify this medieval regime.

Sanctions against Zarif are an enormous setback for Iran’s regime and a fatal blow to the smokescreen that this brutal and medieval regime had made for itself to pursue and please the advocates of the policy of appeasement. This smokescreen has now been destroyed.

No wonder the regime’s President Hassan Rouhani said: “They are talking about negotiation and at the same time they sanction the foreign minister… if they want to negotiate, is there any other channel than the foreign ministry?”

At this point, two important facts merit attention:

Firstly, it is time for Europe to concede to the proven realities and stand alongside the Iranian people, the people of the region and the aroused consciences of the world against this regime, which is the plague of contemporary humanity. The EU must cast aside its absurd mirage that a moderate faction exists inside Iran’s regime.

Secondly, in the past four decades the appeasement policy has exerted enormous damage to the Iranian people, and to peace and tranquility in the region. The effects of this longstanding policy must be identified, rectified, and recompensed.

As has been repeatedly underscored by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of Iranian Resistance, the way to stop and make up for this policy is to recognize the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the prime victim of the appeasement policy, as the democratic alternative to the regime.