This is just the beginning

Hooman Saedpanah

An Iranian diplomat has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Belgian court for attempted murder and involvement in terrorism. Three dual nationality Iranian-Belgians were also sentenced to between 15 and 18 years for their roles as accomplices to the terrorist plot. But this is not enough. For the past 42 years, since the beginning of this regime in Iran, which co-opted the revolution, the peoples of the Iranian state, including the Kurdish people have been calling on the world to recognize this regime as a terrorist regime, ruling through terror.

One of the main strategies of the Iranian regime has been to eliminiate opposition leaders and assassinate members of opposition parties both within the Iranian state and beyond its borders. For example, the regime assassinated Abdul Rahman Qasemlo on 13 July 1989 in Austria; it assassinated Sadeq Sharfkandi on 17 September 1992 in Berlin; and it attempted to assassinate another Kurdish leader, Babashex Hosaini, on 16 October 1995, by planting a bomb under his car in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Iraq. The regime has assassinated and executed thousands of Kurdish resistance fighters in Kurdistan Iraq and throughout Kurdistan, and continues to systematically detain and torture thousands of political prisoners in Iranian prisons. The terrorist plot for which the individuals have been convicted was masterminded by a diplomat attached to the Iranian mission in Austria, Assadollah Assadi.

It involved transporting 550 grams of TATP explosives and a detonator, intended to be used to bomb an Iranian opposition rally in 2018, which was attended by the well-known MEK and many other political parties who struggle to overthrow the Iranian terrorist regime, including the Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle. The intended atrocity would have killed many people, but fortunately the accomplices were arrested by the Belgian police on 30 June 2018 and Assadi was arrested the next day in Germany. Their conviction is a victory, but it is not a final victory. We have to try to understand that Asadullah Asadi did not give these instructions and mastermind the bomb plot without an order from above. The orders definitely came from the Iranian regime. The individual in charge of diplomatic relations is Jawad Zarif.

From this it should be clear that the entire Iranian regime is complicit in what is now recognised as an attempted terrorist attack in a European country in recent years. How many other terrorist plots is the regime responsible for? One of the faults of the international community in general and European countries in particular throughout the past four decades, has been to remain silent and permit their own geopolitical interests to blind them to the reality of the Iranian regime and its crimes against humanity. Now, for the first time since the beginning of this regime, an Iranian diplomat has been convicted as a terrorist. Although his 20 year prison sentence is not enough, we hope that this will be the first victory of many, and we hope to see the entire Iranian regime facing justice for its systematic torture, terrorist attacks and crimes against humanity both within the Iranian state and beyond its borders, in different countries, including in Europe.