By Farid Mahoutchi
The state-run Fars News Agency reported on February 19 that regime foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian met with the foreign ministers of Belgium and Sweden on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
According to Fars, the key topic of discussion between Amirabdollahian and his Belgian counterpart was the status of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat terrorist who is sentenced to 20 years in prison for plotting to bomb the annual gathering of the Iranian Resistance in France in 2018, which if not thwarted at the last minute, would have caused thousands of casualties.
On the same day, the website of the Iranian regime’s foreign ministry reported that Amirabdollahian spoke to the Swedish foreign minister about Hamid Noury, a former torturer in Gohardasht Prison (Karaj) who was involved in the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners. Noury is currently standing trial in a Stockholm court, where many of his victims are giving harrowing testimonies about the atrocities he and other regime authorities committed in Iran’s prisons. According to the website, Amirabdollahian told his Swedish counterpart that “it’s not acceptable that the relations between the two countries are affected by the conspiracies” of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
These events underline two key realities about the regime:
- While the regime initially tried to distance itself from these two controversies, the conviction of Assadi and the testimonies given during the Noury trial have hit it hard. Both criminals represent everything that the regime stands for, terrorism, human rights violations, and lack of respect for human life and values. The regime is terrified of the outcome and implications of both trials to the point where its foreign minister is overtly intervening and vouching for the release of the two criminals after other efforts—including terrorist threats and hostage-taking—proved futile.
- The regime’s diplomatic apparatus is part and parcel of the terrorist network and operations of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The regime’s diplomats, embassies, and other diplomatic facilities are the conduits for the regime’s terror and espionage operations.
Previously, a leaked audio file of former regime foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif proved that the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) dominate the regime’s policies, especially the foreign strategies that have resulted in multitude of terrorist crimes in the region and across the world. Zarif admitted in the audio file that he closely coordinated his policies with Qassem Soleimani, the regime’s eliminated terrorist mastermind and the former commander of the IRGC Quds Force.
Later, reaction to the revealed file, Zarif himself also stressed on the unity in the regime and said, “Reducing the theoretical discussion between the two wings of the establishment’s external power, which means diplomacy and the frontline, as an excuse for promoting a divergence between the military and diplomats who both strive for the state, is not only short-sighted but in full contrast to my views that diplomacy and the frontline complement each other.”
With Ebrahim Raisi now serving as the regime’s president, the relations between the foreign ministry, IRGC, and MOIS have become tighter than ever. Raisi’s cabinet is dominated by IRGC veterans, and Amirabollahian, an IRGC-QF liaison with close ties to Soleimani, oversaw the regime’s terrorist efforts in Iraq.
After the arrest of Assadi, Amirabdollahian had threatened to “shock” western states if they did not release him.
This is not the first time that the regime has tried to pressure the executive branch of a country to release its criminals. But its desperation on the international stage reflects its waning power at home, where the people and their Resistance movement are determined to unseat the mullahs with their continued protests and uprisings.
This article was first published by english.mojahedin
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