It has been a bloody 42 years since the so-called Islamic regime came to power in February 1979 in Iran. For all this time this heavenly regime, as it has been called by the Islamic mullahs, has systematically violated the basic human rights of the Iranian people. The Islamic regime’s supreme leader mullah Ali Khamenei delivered a virtual speech on the occasion of the Islamic prophet’s birthday in Tehran on November 3, 2020. In it, he mentioned that “our Islamic Government follows Islamic rules.” He must have been referring to the disappearances, widespread use of torture and other degrading treatment, harsh prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lack of due process, unfair trials, infringement on citizens’ privacy, and restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, and religion. The supreme leader restricts citizens’ rights to change their government, manipulates the electoral system and represses political dissidents. Systematic abuses include extrajudicial killings and summary executions.
Since the establishment of this dictatorial regime, millions of Iranian citizens have escaped the homeland or have been tortured and executed without any semblance of due process. Further, their families have been harassed, and their properties have been confiscated. Criticism of the terrorist government is unlawful, and anyone who has dared to oppose the Islamic regime has been arrested and held in prison or summarily tried and executed under vague charges. Each year thousands of Iranians are executed by the Islamic regime. Even pregnant women and young boys and girls have not been spared from the wrath of the Islamic revolutionary courts and firing squads. Presently over a million men, women, and children are in prison today in Iran without having been charged with a crime or given the right to defend themselves.
Those who question the views of governing clergies are labeled as enemies of Islam with links to the “Great Satan” (referring to America). In recent years, under the supposed “moderate” era of Islamic President Hassan Rouhani, there have been numerous dissidents, writers, journalists, publishers and even poets that have been arrested, tortured, condemned, and many found dead on false charges that would be the equivalent of merely expressing opinions. Further, in the name of purification of the country of Western ideas, libraries have been closed and millions of books have been destroyed and burned. Museums have been closed, and centuries of art and national heritage of Iranians have been pillaged and looted.
Clergy Hassan Rouhani believes, and said that “execution is the enforcement of God’s commandment and laws of the land that belongs to the people.” While in office, he argues that the death penalty is the key to maintaining law and order. Shamefully, the Islamic regime has executed more people per capita than any other country in the world, and carries out more total executions than any other country except China.
Now, the year 2020 definitely was a year of sadness and sorrow, as the last 41 years have been, due to the loss of many of the best human beings who had dedicated their entire lives to hope and to the freedom of their country Iran, which has lived through years of oppression. This oppression is imposed by a theocracy which has committed unspeakable crimes against those voicing their desires for a free, democratic and secular Iran. The Islamic regime has taken this noble Iranian nation into the middle ages, creating some of the most medieval laws and implementing them against its citizens in the most vicious manner. Stoning men and women, cutting off their fingers, torturing innocent people for their opinion, incarcerating religious minorities on fabricated charges, imprisoning Iranian youth for aspiring to their very basic human rights, and employing vigilantes to murder their opponents. The Islamic regime creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation where people cannot trust one another. In brief, in the name of religion, the clergymen in Iran have created a society where sadness and despair has replaced hope and optimism.
The Islamic clergies have also stepped up the repression of religious minorities in the past year, which resulted in the arrest of many Iranians in different parts of the country. As usual, the clergies have accused them of spying for America and Israel. The Iranian people not only have endured years of oppression under the rule of theocracy but have been isolated throughout the world as a result.
The clerical regime has failed to cope with double-digit unemployment and high inflation during the current sanctions time. Before the so-called revolution in 1979, the U.S. dollar was readily available and was worth about 70 Iranian rials. But after the so-called revolution, the value of the rial gradually started to drop. By the year 2000, the exchange rate had hit over 5,000 rials to a dollar. The rate further dropped to 38,000 rials to a dollar in 2013, with the start of the first sanction period. Presently, the rate varies from 25,000 to 30,000 rials, but the banks, as well as all places for purchase of the US dollar, are under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Although Iran has been rich in natural resources, regretfully, the Iranian people remain destitute with no liberty. It is known that Iran sits on top of a huge volume of oil and gas, with huge income from the petroleum industry before the international sanctions were imposed. The enormous loss of investment in the public sector undermines the Iranian nation’s rights to health and necessities. The obvious reason is that the corrupt Islamic regime’s clergy and their officials siphon billions and billions from public coffers continuously. Even under sanctions, the priority for the clergy is sending money to terrorist groups around the world.
Therefore, economically, the Iranian people are suffering and witness that the country is in deep ruins. The vast national resources of the country have been depleted and disappeared mainly due to mismanagement and corruption by Islamic regime officials. Further, the general standard of living in the country also has continuously deteriorated so rapidly and so profoundly. The burden of course has fallen most heavily on the middle class, if any is still remaining, and obviously on the lower class that makes up the majority of the Iranian population presently. Today, the large majority of people are under the poverty line, and at least one third of the population is desperate for one decent meal per day. Deplorably, under the Islamic regime not only has freedom been lost, but the very high majority of Iranians are deprived economically.
The attitude of the Islamic regime regarding the status of women is an instance of gross and systematic inhumanities inflicted on the people of Iran. Women have suffered the loss of the rights they had under the monarchical regime. The ancient institutions of polygamy and temporary marriages were re-established 42 years ago. Under the Pahlavi monarchical governments prior to the so-called Islamic revolution, Iranian women were free and equal with men in every respect. Many held high-level public positions such as legislative, ministerial, and executive posts in the government. Many thousands of female Iranians were also judges, journalists, and university professors. Unfortunately, within the past 42 years they have all been discharged. The clerical authorities in the Islamic regime forbid women from holding these positions because, according to them, the specific duty of women is to mate and bear children.
Regretfully, 42 years ago, with the assistance and desire of some foreign governments, a stone-age Islamic regime came to power in Iran. For the past 42 years, the excesses of the clergy and dictators have established that the Islamic regime is the most hated government of all time, which is trying to sustain a way of life based on intimidation through the use of terror and fanaticism. But, today, a very great majority of Iranian people are fed up with the backward, scowling, corrupt, terrorist, and prejudicial clerics, who have robbed their country and have killed innumerable of their countrymen and women. The Iranian people, especially the youth of Iran, are at the forefront of a current heroic struggle – the struggle to bring love and harmony back to this deprived nation. They are sacrificing their lives to establish once again the freedom and democracy that they had during the monarchy in Iran.
Iranians believe that the time has come for the world, especially for democratic countries, to officially acknowledge that no real democracy can emerge in Iran in the structure of such an institution belonging to the Dark Ages of human history. Any contrary affirmation is nothing but a denial of the facts and a rejection of the legacy of great philosophies. Iranians declare that the current European economic policies toward the Islamic regime in Iran only wind up intensifying the oppression of the Iranian people, and suggest that by adopting a more long-term policy on backing the Iranian secular and democratic movement, Europe will have much more to gain than to lose as Iranians will become masters of their own national assets and policy.
However, unfortunately, the Iranian nation has never been given the international support, especially by European countries, to be able to translate their plight into an all-consuming movement against this theocracy. The clergy regime’s periodic defiant ballistic missile tests, which are definitely a violation of the United Nations Resolution #1929, are ignored, especially by the European Union.
Further, America and the European Union should notice that the clergy regime in recent years has resorted to the sale and parceling of Iranian land, natural resources, ports, waterways, and so on to non-friendly and non-democratic countries. In June 2020, the clerical regime and China drafted a comprehensive “strategic partnership” for 25 years, which ostensibly covers bilateral cooperation, political, economic, and cultural spheres. But China’s main interest is in Iran’s oil and gas in southern Iran and the availability of the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, Russia, having established ties with the regime, now has total control of the Caspian Sea, as well as the oil and gas in southern Iran. In clear terms, Iranians’ shares of the Caspian Sea were given to Russia, and the Persian Gulf to China. In July 2020 the Islamic regime’s ambassador to Russia called on Moscow and Beijing to unite with Tehran in an anti-U.S. sanctions club to resist pressure from America, all as an effort by the clergy to hold their power in the country. Of course, it is very clear that the Iranian nation never accepted the Caspian Sea treaties with Russia and the quarter-of-a-century treaty with China.
Internally, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is essentially the owner of the most lucrative parts of the Iranian industry, including the country’s major source of income, the oil and gas industry. IRGC is the only power structure of the Islamic regime that answers to no one and sees itself as the only defender of the Islamic ideology and only organization to protect the so-called Islamic revolution. The military entity of the IRGC is called the Quds force, which is in charge of advising Shiite militia groups and carries out terrorism support activities in foreign countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Further, “Khatam al Anbia” is the name for the business part of the IRGC that produces income. Khatam al Anbia owns and controls major parts of the country’s economy.
The gift of the Islamic regime to the world has been terror – terror for the sake of the madmen who have made a mockery out of everything civilized and humane. The clergy’s regime was established for the purpose of destruction and genocide, a regime in which persecution and execution are everyday business, where terrorists train to murder innocent people.
Therefore, what should the U.S. and the world’s free nations be doing about all this? Washington and its allies ought to be paying far more attention to the groups of Iranian dissenters, the modernists and democrats who have been forced underground or into exile, rather than demoralizing the growing secular opposition by appearing to give in to the Islamic regime’s fabricated diplomacy. The American president and his administration should continue to build pressure and leverage on the clerical regime of Iran, primarily to address the regime’s human rights abuses and corruption, and also the regime’s proxies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. The free world can seek the condemnation of the bloody Islamic regime as an illegal government, and thus aid the Iranian nation in their pursuit of change. Specifically, the European countries can put an end to the fruitless negotiations and political backing that sustain the Islamic dictators’ reign of terror. They can help the Iranian people to rid their nation of this murderous calamity and once again gain a respectable position in the world community. Therefore, the democratic world should be advocating the overthrow of the Islamic regime in Iran.
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