Letter from 11 Opposition Organizations to European Leaders: Help Replace Islamic Republic with a Secular Democratic System in Iran
Eleven organizations and parties of the “Iran Democratic Opposition” have called on the leaders of three European countries involved in Vienna negotiations to replace nuclear talks with “maximum support” for the Iranian people and help “end the Islamic Republic system and replace it with a secular democratic system.”
Hamed Shibaniraad, a political activist and member of the Farshgarod network, explained the reasons for writing this letter to the Persian service of Voice of America by stating that “negotiations with the Islamic Republic are unfortunately heading toward signing a worse agreement than before.” He added: “Active political forces in the struggle against the Islamic Republic have defined tasks for themselves, including negotiating with interested foreign countries and occasionally reminding them of certain points.”
This Farshgarod network member described the Islamic Republic as “abnormal,” “anti-human rights,” and “anti-Semitic” that “goes to the other side of the world and to Argentina to kill Jews,” and continued: “The Iranian people, like other freedom-seeking people who fought their oppressors, need the support of the international community. Just as others helped the people of Eastern European countries to be saved.”
Shibaniraad considered “implementing smart and targeted sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s repressive forces” and “recognizing opposition and active political forces in the field who are democratic and secular” as methods for Western countries to help “the process of forming an alternative to the Islamic Republic,” and emphasized: “If the Islamic Republic’s repressive forces commit mass killings like November 2019 or even worse, it is the duty of foreign governments to intervene on humanitarian grounds.”
Based on the text of this letter addressed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the policy of the West, particularly Europe, toward the Islamic Republic over the past 43 years has been described as “appeasement and accommodation aimed at normalizing and changing the behavior of this inherently abnormal regime,” a policy that has “failed” and “not only has it failed to change the Islamic Republic’s evil behaviors but has intensified its ‘terrorist activities’ and ‘nuclear and military ambitions’ in the international arena and ‘suppression of the Iranian people’ in the domestic sphere.”
The signatory organizations have called two decades of nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic “an exhausting process” that “only gave the Islamic Republic an opportunity to buy time and, through concealment and deception of the international community, advance its military nuclear programs and ballistic missiles to an irreversible stage.”
The organizations “Freedom Voice Think Tank, Iran Change, Social Democrats for Iran, Iran Secular Democracy Movement, Secular Democrat Party of Iranians, Iran Constitutional Party (Liberal Democrat), Pan-Iranist Party Foreign Organization, Liberal Iran Graduates Organization, Farshgarod Network, Iran Liberation Congress, and People’s Institution” have been announced as signatories of this letter.
Source: Voice of America
