The Denish Foreign Minister, Anders Samuelsen, speaks to the press after the meeting of the EU Ministers, unanimously agreeing in sanctioning, part of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) for its involvement in terrorist activities in European soil.

On Tuesday, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen announced the imposition of sanctions against two Iranian regime diplomats. The two diplomats were sanctioned for their roles in orchestrating terrorist plots in Europe.

Samuelson named the regime diplomats as Deputy Minister and Director General of Intelligence Saeid Hashemi Moghadam and Vienna-based diplomat Asadollah Assadi. Assadi is currently jailed in Belgium awaiting trial for masterminding a foiled terrorist attack on the annual National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) gathering in Paris last year. Assadi was targeting the tens of thousands of MEK members who attended the event.

The sanctions by the Danish government follow the recent expulsion of three regime diplomats from Albania. On December 19, 2018, Albania’s Foreign Ministry announced that it had made the decision to expel the diplomats for “violating their diplomatic status” and posing a threat to national security.

A Necessary Response

The sanctions by the Danish government are a welcome and long-overdue response to the regime’s continued terrorist acts on European soil. The mullahs have acted without consequences for the entirety of their reign, and it is time that they are held to account for their actions. Imposing sanctions on and expelling regime diplomats is a good way to start this process, but it must be followed by blacklisting the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), trying the regime’s intelligence agents and mercenaries in courts of law, and expelling them from their host countries.

A Terrorist Regime

The MEK has spent the last three decades emphasizing that the regime’s embassies and its foreign ministry are a part of its terrorist mechanism. Finally, the international community is beginning to abandon the policy of appeasement toward the mullahs and accept the reality that the Iranian regime is a terrorist theocracy that must be dealt with in a firm manner.

In its July 2017 report, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) wrote: “The official headquarters of the Ministry of Intelligence at the Iranian Embassy in Berlin has an important role in the secret service’s reconnaissance. In addition to conducting independent intelligence operations, these headquarters support activities conducted by the Ministry of Intelligence in Tehran. These operations are mainly against targets in Germany and, in some cases, against individuals or facilities in other European countries.”

The MEK’s Recommendations

The MEK recommends that the European Union implement the following measures to prevent the Iranian regime from engaging in terrorist acts in Europe:

• Blacklist the MOIS and the IRGC;
• shut down the Iranian regime’s embassies, and expel its diplomats; and
• in accordance with the European Union’s declaration of April 29, 1997
  • refrain from issuing visas to regime intelligence agents,
  • expel agents and mercenaries currently on European soil, and
  • stop meetings between European officials and the Iranian regime at the ministerial level.

Staff Writer