Maryam Rajavi’s steadfast message, to political and religious leaders around the world over a period of many years, is a 10-point plan for the future of Iran that would resolve Iran’s most dangerous and destabilizing challenges.
The plan would restore political legitimacy through universal suffrage, guarantee rights for all citizens and particularly women and minorities, end the cruel excesses of the judiciary and establish the rule of law, end the nightmare of fundamentalist Islamic dictatorship by once again separating church and state, protect property rights, promote equal opportunity and environmental protections and, last but certainly not least, it would seek a non-nuclear Iran, free of weapons of mass destruction.
The idea that Washington should continue in 2015 to disregard a worldwide group of Iranians promoting such a platform is indefensible. The United States should be maintaining a vibrant and constant dialogue with the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
It is by now beyond dispute that the regime in Tehran is fomenting instability and conflict throughout the region, most notably in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. Its campaign to undermine stability was launched because the regime sought to enhance its influence throughout the region and because it feared the emergence of more open political systems in nearby countries that could revive the democratic forces behind the Persian Spring of 2009.
Iran shares responsibility for the rise of ISIS. This phenomenon was cynically fostered by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq to divert the focus from their own divisive sectarian actions, supported by Iran, about which we have repeatedly warned in previous years.
Iran’s regime has sustained a leader in Damascus guilty of major war crimes against his own people and in defiance of a presidential “red line,” a U.N.-brokered transition process and the united stance of Arab League governments insisting on his departure. It has supplied military-grade weapons to Hezbollah, a Lebanese non-state actor with the blood of American diplomats and Marines on its hands. It has supported and led sectarian militias in Iraq assaulting Sunni villages and towns. It has provided long-range rockets to Hamas in Gaza to be aimed at population centers in Israel, destabilizing efforts at a negotiated two-state solution. And it has supplied arms, explosives and funds to an insurgent group in Yemen that has driven out foreign embassies, including our own, seized power and provoked a new regional military conflict.
• Mr. Freeh is former director of the FBI. The above are comments he made June 13 at the event in Paris as he read excerpts from the New Policy Initiative.
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