Former Colombian Presidential Candidate: The West Was Wrong About Iran
By Hamideh Taati
In an op-ed published in Belgian magazine Le Vif, Ingrid Betancourt, French- Colombian personality and former Colombian presidential candidate, criticized the West’s appeasement policy visa-vis the Iranian regime and pointed to its devastating consequences. Betancourt urged western governments to adopt a firm policy toward the Iranian regime.
While referring to the foiled terrorist attack by the Iranian regime against the Paris rally of the Iranian opposition in 2018, Betancourt said: “While Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani was in Europe to discuss trade, the security services in Belgium, France and Germany foiled a terrorist bomb plot by Rouhani’s government against Free Iran gathering where thousands of people freedom-loving people, including myself, attended.”
“During the last decades, Western countries have pursued the appeasement policy and considered it a wise policy. They looked for alliance with the so-called ‘moderate’ factions inside the regime in a bid to reform it. This policy allowed the Iranian government to secretly pursue its nuclear weapons program and spread terrorism in the Middle East even in our home,” she added.
Saying that the terrorism is the visible part of the Iranian cancer, she wrote: “This dictatorial regime has the highest records in women execution and execution rate to population. Michele Bachelet, the U.N High Commissioner for Human Rights, referred to the Iranian Judiciary as a symbol of pure injustice. This is the same regime that wants to export its reactionary rule in the Middle East and tries to reach an atomic bomb in order to impose itself to the world.”
“Our diplomacy never took into consideration the demands of the people of Iran. for more than year the popular uprising and protests continue across Iran. Iranians do not want the plundering of their natural resources for the Mullahs’ warmongering and corruption. They have paid the price of Mullahs’ rule with their hunger and death on a daily basis,” she wrote in respect to the recent popular movements in Iran.
While referring to role of the Iranian resistance and the alternative led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, Betancourt said, “[Rajavi] is a Muslim woman who struggles for freedom of her country, against corruption, injustice and misogyny of the Iranian regime. She wants a democratic secular government based on the separation of religion and state; she defends women’s right and has given them responsibilities inside the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which she leads. She endeavors for the abolition of torture and execution. She seeks an end to Khomeini’s successors’ race to an atomic bomb. She is charismatic and popular.”
“The Trump’s policy has a chance to end the nightmare of the Iranian regime by paving the way for democratic alternatives, such as Maryam Rajavi, to gain power. We have to admit that we were wrong until now, and now we must compensate,” Betancourt added, also underlining the importance of supporting the Iranian resistance, while referring to the rally held on Saturday, June 15, in Brussels that she herself attended.