Daily Times

Decades of appeasement have emboldened the Iranian regime. Today, domestic repression by the regime has reached its highest level and the regime openly promotes and uses terrorism as a tool of its foreign policy. Lifting the UN’s arms embargo would give the regime strong backup for repression inside Iran and terrorism outside its borders.

Last week, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, wrote that the cruise missiles used in last year’s attack on the Aramco oil facility were of Iranian origin. This should be a wake-up call for those who say, “It’s time to take the pressure off the Iranian regime.”

The regional policy of the Iranian regime is to create crisis and export terrorism in the Middle East. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its extraterritorial arm, the Quds Force, are the main entities that advance this policy.

The regime spends billions of dollars of national wealth on its weapons programs and proxy wars throughout the Mideast under the pretext of “the battle with the United States” or, as the regime calls it, the battle with the “Great Satan.”

“The formation of a resistance front in the region against the United States is one of the areas in which the IRGC is active,” Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the regime, said last October.

The Iranian regime has been chanting “Death to America” for more than four decades. Its newest show was in the regime’s parliament on June 8, where the MPs collectively chanted “Death to America.”

Support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the death of more than half a million Syrians, support for Yemen’s Houthis and terrorist militias in Iraq, as well as support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, are all part of the regime’s plan to export terrorism to the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a lawmaker and former chairman of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said in a recent interview that Iran has spent nearly $30 billion in Syria to support the Syrian dictator.

The Iranian people are fed up with the plundering and exploiting of Iran’s wealth by the regime for its agenda in support of regional and global terrorism. Protesters in last November and January chanted “Leave Syria alone, think of us instead,” in most cities nationwide. The regime has kept itself in power for 40 years through deceit, repression, torture, and mass executions.

The US’s “maximum pressure” policy and UN’s arms embargo have slowed down and sometimes, even stopped the regime’s support of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world.

Lifting the UN’s arms embargo on Iran will expand the regime’s terrorism in the Middle East

The arms embargo against Iran will expire on October 18, 2020. The Iranian regime has been awaiting the end of this embargo to resume all extremist activities to dominate the Middle East and, according to Khamenei, form an ‘axis of resistance.’

On June 15, the German intelligence service wrote in a report that the Iranian regime is still looking for equipment to build unconventional weapons that are banned internationally.

Lifting the sanctions on Iran’s regime paves the way for its unbridled terrorism in other parts of the world, including Europe and the United States. Asadollah Assadi, an Iranian official that was working under diplomatic cover, was arrested in Germany by the police in June 2018. He was arrested because of his role in the foiled Iranian terrorist plot to bomb a rally of the Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK (the main Iranian opposition group) near Paris.

Lifting the sanctions will also give the regime a green light to suppress the Iranian people inside Iran.

According to one of the clauses in Security Council Resolution 2231, which was implemented in 2015, Iran is prohibited from buying offensive weapons for up to five years. This resolution clause expires in October 2020, and that gives the Iranian regime an open hand to buy armaments from other countries.

Neither the Iranian people, nor the people of the Middle East, nor the people of the world want this. The people of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have risen against the terrorism of the Iranian regime.

So, for reasons of peace and calm in the Middle East and all over the world, the Security Council member states must extend the Iranian regime’s arms embargo. Meanwhile, the US’s “maximum pressure” campaign on the regime should be maintained, while Tehran’s financial resources should be cut off.

Siavosh Hosseini is a journalist at The Media Express news agency. You can follow him on Twitter at @siavoshhosseini.