Stevenson: Resolution on Iran Recalls Our Founding Declaration

OPINION

Thomas Paine, one of America’s great Founders famously said, “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

His words will be familiar to the 145 bipartisan members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a resolution condemning the Iranian regime’s brutality and repression.

The resolution calls for protection of dissidents targeted by the regime.

It was introduced by Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, and recognizes the right of the Iranian people to seek regime change, without calling for U.S. military support.

Acknowledging the soaring regional conflict in the Mideast which has “heightened since the October 7, 2023, attacks” by Hamas on Israel, the resolution identifies the mullahs’ regime as the definitive nerve centre for spreading Islamic fundamentalism, commanding and sponsoring terrorism, as well as warmongering across the region.

Using their Mideast proxies like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza, the mullahs have spread terror and war across the zone and further afield, while brutally repressing their own people in Iran.

The congressional resolution is timely, given the abrupt end to the decades-old shadow war between the Islamic Republic and Israel, which exploded into open conflict with the mullahs’ unprecedented barrage on April 13, when more than 300 drones and missiles were launched toward Israel.

This triggered Israel’s retaliatory response on April 19, with airstrikes on military targets in the Iranian cities of Isfahan and Tabriz, and simultaneous drone and missile attacks on Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) compounds in Iraq and Syria.

The resolution recognizes that Tehran is the head of the snake fomenting war and terror in the region and globally, and indeed directed and financed the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza.

The members of Congress say that Western nations must “hold the Iranian regime accountable for its actions that incite violence, terror, and instability.”

The wide-ranging resolution even expresses support for the 10-point plan for future democracy prepared by Maryam Rajavi, the charismatic president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the main opposition movement to the mullahs’ tyrannical regime.

The 10-point plan calls for the universal right to vote, free elections, a market economy, the separation of religion and state.

It also advocates gender, religious, and ethnic equality, a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, peace in the Mideast, and a nonnuclear Republic of Iran.

Identifying the theocratic regime’s use of terror and hostage-taking as statecraft, the signatories to the resolution “recognize the rights of the Iranian people, the protesters, and the Resistance Units to confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and repressive forces to bring about change.”

In his impassioned speech in Congress supporting the resolution Rep. Weber said the “rogue regime needs to be overthrown immediately” and that the U.S. must support the “freedom-loving citizens of Iran” who are trying to remove the “murderers” in Tehran.

That such a comprehensive condemnation of the Iranian regime has received large-scale bi-partisan congressional support will have shaken the mullahs to the core.

Their bombastic display of faux force with a parade of soldiers, drones and missiles in Tehran on the IRGC Army Day on April 17, was a widely derided attempt to cover the spectacular failure of their attack on their arch enemy Israel.

Approximately 99% of the missiles and drones fired at Israeli targets either blew up after launching or were destroyed by the Israeli Iron Dome defence system, with air support from the United States, UK, France, and Jordan.

Intelligence chiefs have reported that around 50% of the cruise and ballistic missiles actually exploded shortly after they were launched, many of them crashing in Iran.

In a further fiasco, a water canon malfunctioned during the Army Day parade, spraying bystanders and guests of the mullahs, causing widespread delight and mirth across the nation.

The mullahs’ fury at being mocked on social media has already led to several arrests.

Absurd comments by President Ebrahim Raisi have also attracted nationwide derision.

Known as the Butcher of Tehran for his bloodstained past as a key executioner, Raisi pompously claimed that the drone and missile strike on Israel had been a huge success and demonstrated to the world the prowess of the Iranian military.

Iran’s attack “brought down the glory of the Zionist regime [Israel],” Raisi said at a military base on the outskirts of Tehran on April 17.

He continued, “This operation showed that our armed forces are ready.”

TV news broadcasts on state-run networks showed raging fires which were claimed to be the result of targeted missile strikes in Israel.

The clip used was lifted from an old video of a burning vineyard in Chile!

Quoting directly from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the House of Representatives’ Resolution emphasizes, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,” and that ‘”when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

The bi-partisan Resolution in the U.S. Congress marks a major turning point in Western attitudes toward Iran’s regime.

It demonstrates that American lawmakers from all political sides are no longer prepared to accept the abhorrent behavior of the mullahs’ pariah regime, and wish to show their outright support for the Iranian people and their rights within the framework of international law, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to bring about regime change.

The EU and UK must now show their support for this ground-breaking initiative by following America’s lead in blacklisting the IRGC, while also calling for the indictment of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi for human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.

Thomas Paine’s words will echo throughout Iran when the people finally celebrate a glorious triumph over the tyrannical mullahs’ regime.

Struan Stevenson is the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Mideast.

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