EDITORIAL: Five days that can shake Iran

 

Ashraf 3, home to members of Iran’s main opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin (Mujahedin-e Khalq, PMOI or MEK) in Albania, has just witnessed five days of intense political activity with a number of conferences and exhibitions involving resistance members and local and international political figures, at a time when Iran is in the news against a backdrop of regional and international tensions.

Events of the last five days in Ashraf 3 have strategic significance for Iran’s current situation:

The unveiling of Ashraf 3 constitutes a victory for the Iranian opposition. Previously, when MEK members were situated in Iraq, the mullahs tried repeatedly to annihilate the group physically, politically and socially. The establishment of Ashraf 3 in Albania, nowadays part of the free world and out of the reach of the mullahs and their mercenaries, is the last thing Khamenei and his regime needed in their times of trouble. Ashraf 3 is the victorious culmination of a decade of resistance again terrorist, regional and political efforts to bring an end to the MEK. Instead the MEK has emerged stronger, more acceptable, and invincible at this critical juncture.

The international impasse and the regional crisis in which the mullahs’ regime is entrenched reflects, and at times hides, the deep social crisis that, for more than a year, has engulfed the regime in the shape of organized, well-aimed social activities especially by Iranian youth and women. Despite brutal repression, the mullahs have been unable to curb the growing qualitative and quantitative reach of this social crisis.

In parallel with events inside the country, the long and winding road from Ashraf 1 (Camp Ashraf in Iraq) to Ashraf 3, now behind the Resistance thanks to a long international mobilization of support for more than ten years, has given birth to a strong political trend in the international arena against the mullahs. Like the Resistance itself, this political trend has blocked the path of Western appeasement towards the mullahs, and in its evolution, it has found its way to the highest decision-making centers of the world.

The firmness witnessed in the words of the Resistance’s international supporters during the five-day program went further than support for NCRI president-elect Maryam Rajavi’s 10-point plan for the future of Iran: they demanded that leaders of the mullahs’ regime by put on trial. This is a clear complement to the general disavowal of Iran’s regime in the international arena

Back to top button