Iran’s Regime Arms Embargo Is Indispensable To Regional and Global Peace and Security

Written by
Shahriar Kia

UN Security Council
The United Nations Security Council failed to pass the draft resolution presented by the United States to extend the Iranian regime’s arms embargo. This action further increases the Iranian people’s harsh living conditions and threats the global peace and security. But how?

Iranian people are the first victims of the mullahs’ warmongering policies

Since taking power in 1979, the Iranian regime has wasted national resources on terrorism and warmongering. Domestic oppression and export of crises abroad are the regime’s two pillars of existence. The regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini prolonged the Iran-Iraq war for eight years and sent thousands of students over minefields. The war that could had ended when Iraqi troops withdrew from Iran and the Iraqi government accepted the peace plan proposed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to end the war. But Khomeini refused to end the war since he had welcomed the war as a boon, calling it “a divine blessing,” as he used it demagogically to bash all opposition to his regime as an Iraqi fifth column and pursue his dream of having “an Islamic empire.”

After Khomeini’s death, his heirs, such as the current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, pursued his warmongering policies. The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) was tasked to further increase the regime’s terrorist activities in the region. Thus, the IRGC extraterritorial Quds Force began its operations in the early 1990s. These two terrorist organizations, besides funding and arming terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and Houthis in Yemen, carried out different terrorist plots around the globe.

As the Iranian people are grappling with the COVID-19 outbreak and its increasing death toll, along with economic hardships, the IRGC tested new ballistic missiles during the second day of the final stage of their naval drills in southern Iran on July 30. While Iranian people are starving and are being crushed under economic hardships, the mullahs continue funding terrorist groups and propping up Syrian dictator Bashar-al-Assad by wasting billions of dollars of Iran’s national wealth.

In this regard, on May 20, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a former Member of Parliament, in an interview with the state-run Etemad online news agency said: “When I went to Syria, some complained that I had caused expenses, but I will say this again: We may have given $20-30 billion to Syria. The money of our people was spent there.” 

Furthermore, more weapons for the Iranian regime means more people being gunned down on the streets, such as the 1500 innocent protesters killed during the nationwide Iran protests in November by the IRGC forces.

The mullahs are whining about the international sanctions. So how are they able to fund these terrorist activities other than depriving the Iranian people from their own national resources?

 

The Iranian regime’s threat to peace and security in the Middle East and Europe

The mullahs’ regime has never stopped its terrorist activities. The regime’s attack on the Saudi Arabia’s oil refinery last September is an example of the regime’s direct terrorism. The NCRI United States Representative Office last September revealed that commanders of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) navy from the city of Mahshahr, southwestern Iran, had gone to the Omidieh airbase (missile attack command operations command) to carry out that attack.

Later in June, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a report to the UN Security Council, confirmed that missiles used to attack Saudi Arabia last year were “of Iranian origin.”

The regime has been publicly defending its funding of terrorism. In this regard, Hassan Nasrallah, head of the terrorist Hezbollah group in Lebanon said: “Brothers, we are not ashamed to say that Hezbollah’s budget, expenses, food, and weapons are from the Islamic Republic of Iran. If Iran has money, it means we have money. Do you want more transparency?”

Bu the regime’s terrorism is not limited to the Middle East.

On Thursday, July 30, 2020, a court in Antwerp, Belgium held the second preliminary hearing in the case of Assadollah Assadi, the regime’s terrorist diplomat, who, acting on orders of the Iranian regime’s most senior leadership, was in the process of carrying out the terrorist bombing of the NCRI’s annual “Free Iran” gathering on June 30, 2018, in Villepinte, Paris.

This “diplomat terrorist” was planning to target a gathering which was not only attended by the Iranian opposition leader, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi and thousands of exiled Iranians, but was also attended by many renowned European and American politicians and parliamentarians, as well many other EU and US citizens.

After the massive and tragic explosion in Lebanon when locals poured onto the street and blamed Hezbollah and the Iranian regime for this explosion and attacked several governmental centers, Keyhan daily, known as Khamenei’s mouthpiece, in its editorial on August 10 threatened European countries.

While blaming the U.S. and France for the protests in Lebanon, labeling it as “terrorism”, and describing the Iranian regime’s terrorist proxy groups as a “Resistance Movement,” Keyhan wrote: “There is a key strategic point in dealing with the stubborn enemies of the resistance front. If they fight face to face, they should be fought back. But if they resort to terrorism and political or economic sabotage, the same method [terrorist plots] should be carried out against their security and economic interests.”

As the NCRI president-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, has said: “An Arms Embargo against the religious fascism ruling Iran is indispensable to regional and global peace and security. The regime’s unimpeded purchase and sale of weapons will have no result other than terrorism, warmongering and export of fundamentalism. The Iranian people, with nearly 90,000 coronavirus fatalities, are, more than ever before, in need of allocating the astronomical budget for weapons, and nuclear and missile projects to their health and treatment. The familiar slogans chanted by people of Iran and directed at the mullahs and against any appeasement of the regime are: ‘Leave Syria alone, think of us,’ ‘Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, my life only for Iran.’ The regime’s leaders must face justice as the greatest perpetrators of terrorism in the world today as should their agents and mercenaries inside and outside Iran.”