MEK Iran: The more outrageously it behaves the more likely it will be condemned inside and outside Iran.

A protester who was arrested during the 2018 protests in Iran, Mostafa Salehi, has been executed by the regime following a sham trial. The regime has been forced to halt the execution of three other protesters following an international campaign, so the execution of Mostafa Salehi is a sign of the desperate situation the regime finds itself in. The more outrageously it behaves the more likely it will be condemned inside and outside Iran. The more lenient it is, the more emboldened becomes the Iranian opposition, The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran).

The support for the three protesters whose execution has been put on hold comes at the same time as a stay of execution for eight others who had been sentenced to death by the regime’s Judiciary in Isfahan. In this latter case, it was an action by the prisoners’ families that forced a temporary halt to the executions.

The fact that these executions have been halted while that of Mostafa Salehi has gone ahead is at first sight somewhat puzzling. The regime isn’t known for its fairness and liberal attitudes to political protests. It massacred 30,000 MEK members and supporters back in 1988 and showed it hasn’t changed when 1,500 protesters were killed in the November 2019 uprising. Flogging, stoning, the amputation of limbs, the arrest of intellectuals, the forced veiling of women are all grist for the mill for the regime.

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Basically, the regime is between the devil and the deep, blue sea as its actions have turned Iran into a powder keg, ready to explode. The regime on the one hand doesn’t want to light the fuse that could lead to its own violent demise but at the same time can’t stop old habits, including using the most repressive actions against whatever it perceives as dissent. Much has happened over the last few years to rattle the cage the regime is cornered into. Protests, uprisings, the boycott of this February’s sham parliamentary elections, the dire economic situation, sanctions, and the Covid-19 pandemic have all conspired to shake the regime’s hold over power in Iran.

The state-run media has increasingly revealed the dichotomy the regime faces. An article in the Mostaghel daily on July 13^th is illustrative of the warnings that have been made by some who write in the media. “Fear of bullets and pressure pushed back the people who had hopes of a better life. Yet, the principal players of this game know that what happened in November is a prologue to an upcoming flood from the slums, which will wash everything with it.

Now, a savior was needed to divert people’s attention from the November and January incidents. So, came the novel coronavirus. The government used people’s fear of this invisible enemy to unleash the dragon among them. Thus, they [the authorities] left hungry and depressed people alone in a room with a lion and waited for the work to be done.”

The regime is in a deadlock. Execute prisoners and risk a powerful backlash from the Iranian people. Don’t carry out harsh punishment of critics of the regime, a crime that is often labeled “enemy of God,” and risk allowing the Iranian opposition (PMOI / MEK Iran), to turf them out of power.

As president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, has said, “reluctantly forced to refrain from executing eight other detained protesters subsequent to the millions-strong social media campaign calling for the halt in executions, the ruling religious fascism carried out this execution in retaliation and in order to terrorize the public and thwart the outbreak of an uprising.”

Mrs. Rajavi has urged international authorities including member states of the U.N. to condemn the executions of political prisoners. She requested that the U.N. send a team of investigators to Iran to inspect the conditions that prisoners were facing in the prisons.