Shaheen Fatemi*

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Once again the Islamic Regime in Tehran is at the end of its ropes but may be saved by Washington. After years of burdensome sanctions, imposed on the people of Iran, now that the regime has been denied access to its enormous oil revenue, Tehran is changing the décor and re-arranging the actors in order to avoid its collapse and prolong its deadly reign.

Once before, in the 1990’s when as a result of Mikonos Affair, where several leaders of Iranian Kurds were assassinated at a Restaurant in Berlin, European countries recalled their Ambassadors and Tehran was forced to refresh its face by featuring Mohammad Khatami and his so-called dialogue of civilizations! In his two-term presidency, Khatami achieved no major change in the brutal dictatorship and after eight years, when the good cop-bad cop, game was over, Ahmadinejad, was hand-picked by Khamenei, as President and all pretenses to “reform” were forgotten.

Fast forward, eight years later, Rohani-Zarif team are a re-run of Khatami period of Islamism with a smiling mask. If Ahmadinejad was in denial of the Holocaust, Zarif tweets to Nancy Pelosi’s daughter his apologies for the former President’s ignorant remark and reassures the daughter of Minority Leader of the House that Ahmadinejad is gone and he is not personally a Holocaust-denier and to prove that, he sends a Rosh Hashanah greetings to the Jews! Now with such up-to-date social networking, how can anyone deny the fact that the Islamic Republic is not a peace-loving, civilized and law abiding regime? A few weeks later, Doctor President Hassan Rohani will join Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, a well-known face to the Lobbyists of the regime in New York and the two will launch the latest version of the Islamic Republic’s “charm offensive.”

The two emissaries of the blood-thirsty dictator, Ali Khamenei, will go to the United States with the excuse of attending the United Nations Annual General Assembly meeting, but their real mission will be very different. They will try to blame all the wrong doings of the past on Ahmadinejad, forgetting the fact that he has been president only for eight of the thirty-five years of this regime. It was not Ahmadinejad who invaded the American Embassy in Tehran and kept the American diplomats as hostages for four hundred and forty days. It was not Ahmadinejad who killed 241 US Marines in Beirut Barracks Bombing in 1983, it was not Ahmadinejad who conducted terrorist acts in Saudi Arbia and in Iraq against the American Troops. And today, it is not Ahmadinejad who is aiding and abating mass murderers in Syria.

As long as the most basic human rights are denied to the men and women of Iran, as long as thousands of political activist, women’s movements leaders, journalists and students, as well as dissident political leaders are illegally imprisoned in Iran, this pariah regime should be detested and rejected. Any accommodation with this regime, under the present circumstances, will lead to dismay and disappointment of millions of Iranians. In the Nuclear issue as well as regional and other pending questions, the emissaries of this regime, including the so-called President, are impotent. Under the letter and the practice of the current so-called “Constitution,” the President is simply a figure-head. The true and real authority is vested in Khamenei who is a sworn enemy of the US, Europe and all civilized countries.

Any accommodation with this regime, by the Western powers, under the present circumstance, is an affront to millions of freedom loving Iranians as well as millions of other people in the Middle East who are suffering because of actions and manipulations of the Satan in Tehran.