Dr. Kazem Moussavi

Dear President Joe Biden!

I am writing to you as one of the millions of victims of the Iranian regime’s human rights violation, who has been living in exile in Germany for years, and also on behalf of Iranians who are demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights in their country.

Your administration is trying to reach a new nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic. I saddened to inform you that this regime will not abide by its obligation in any nuclear deal in the future as it has been demonstrated in the previous one as well as its anti-American rhetoric and its strive to annihilate Israel.

The ruling theocracy cannot be reformed in Iran through negotiations or deals as the Western powers could not deal with the German Nazis in the late 1930s. The ayatollahs perceive themselves as instruments of God in an apocalyptic war between good and evil. They anticipate the return of Mahdi, the hidden 12th Shiite Imam, who according to the regime’s constitution is the actual head of state, in which the current leaders occupy his seat until his imminent arrival. In their view, the Jews, the State of Israel, the US, and the West as a whole are identified as the forces of evil that will be destroyed simultaneously upon the reappearance of Mahdi.

The regime also had tried to violently mold the culture and society into an Islamic form in order to use Iran’s natural resources to fund its terror machine in the region and its nuclear and missile programs.

Dear President Biden!

In 2009, President Barack Obama tragically ignored the Iranian peaceful civil movement’s cry for help: “Obama, Obama, are you with the mullahs or with us?” The immediate result was the bitter disappointment of Iranians and the brutal suppression of the peaceful demonstrations, by which thousands were killed and many forced to flee the country. Furthermore, the Middle East witnessed the regime’s military intervention in Syria, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. Then came a vague nuclear deal in Vienna in 2015 that would open the road for the regime to become a nuclear power after 2025 without any clause for accountability of human rights violations.

Likewise, lessons should be learned in order to correct the flaws in President Trump’s approach to deal with Tehran: Despite the justified withdrawal from the nuclear deal, imposing comprehensive sanctions against the regime, eliminating the mass murderer, Ghassem Soleimani, and the efforts for diplomatic relations of the Arab states with Israel, which have been jointly affected by the ayatollah’s terror policy, the lack of human rights accountability in the Secretary of State’s 12 requirements was an obvious flaw that would demonstrate an illusion to deal with the Iranian regime. On the other hand, the potential of the Iranian freedom movement has been ignored. This is the most powerful instrument to end the regime’s missile and nuclear programs.

Former President Trump also left Afghanistan to the Taliban and Syria to Putin and Iran. Erdogan in Turkey became bold by a clear green light from the previous administration, which resulted in an invasion of Kurdish territory in Syria that had a significant role to defeat ISIS. Erdogan received the sign when the US ignored the Halk Bank’s role in bypassing international sanctions against the Iranian regime.

Dear Mr. President!

Now the regime in Iran is trying to create leverage by doubling down on its threats. Tehran says it will ban the IAEA from gaining free access to suspicious military facilities. It increases the number of advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment from 20 to 60 percent. Likewise, the Iranian regime has been testing new ballistic missiles or, more recently, a satellite-carrying missile with allegedly the “most powerful” used solid-fuel engine. Tehran has also announced to produce – nuclear weapons-grade – uranium metal.

Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, told Nikkei in an interview on March 13, 2021, “The production of uranium at higher levels of enrichment brings Iran closer to levels for which the development of military uses could not be excluded.”

The recent IAEA’s failure to adopt a necessary resolution for the regime’s latest violation of the nuclear deal conditions emboldens Tehran to take more adventurous measures to create leverage for upcoming negotiations. IAEA followed the US and the EU’s directions to waive such a resolution.

Dear Mr. President!

The Regime’s threats are echoed by Iran lobbyists in Washington, who call on the US to quickly return to the nuclear deal before mid-May while Hassan Rouhani still is in office. They argue that starting the negotiations would fortify the “reformists” against the “hardliners.” They propagate that “peace” in the region cannot be established without the USA and Europe making concessions to the mullahs. These claims have been refuted by repeated widespread anti-regime protests in Iran in recent years, of which the Tehran rulers are deeply afraid. Their voice should be heard by the US. They shouted: “Our enemy is within, and not the USA”!

The lobbyists are still pleading with the World Bank to grant the application for $ 5 billion for alleged combat against the pandemic, while the regime clearly rejects Western countries’ offers of humanitarian and medical aid. Khamenei bans vaccines produced in the west as means of enemy conspiracy. Giving any lifeline in form of a loan would certainly not be used by the regime for the well-being of the Iranian people. History has shown that the regime used the money, including JCPOA’s payments, to support its proxies in the region, including the brutal Houthis in Yemen. I deeply regret that the Houthis were removed from the US terrorist list. This encourages the regime to keep up the pressure on the US and its allies.

Dear Mr. President!

Despite these facts, the US is currently in indirect talks with the regime. This is a regime that has recently been convicted by a Belgian court for a planned terror attack in Europe. This is a regime that denies the Holocaust and wants to destroy Israel. The nuclear talks will be doomed to fail, and only legitimize the Iranian regime, giving the mullahs an opportunity to continue cheating and the time to build up a ballistic missile arsenal with nuclear warheads to further blackmail its neighbors, the Middle East, and the world.

To prevent a major war and a nuclear regime in Iran, the US government should stand firmly on the side of the Iranian people and in this sense:

The Revolutionary Guard and the Al-Quds Brigade should be weakened, as they are the sole power-preserving apparatus of the regime in Iran as well as an instrument for its global expansion of terrorism and anti-Semitism. These entities, also, construct, organize, and coordinate the regime’s bomb and missile-making machine.

Even more important, the removal of sanctions by any means should be bound to an immediate and verifiable cessation of human rights abuses and executions in Iran. This would be an effective contribution to a peaceful transition to a democratic, secular, and nuclear missile-free Iran, which is essential for security and peace in the region and the world.

Dear President Biden, I would appreciate your reply to my letter.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Kazem Moussavi

(Co-Founder and Spokesperson of the Green Party of Iran in Germany, and editor of Iran Appeasement Monitor)

Berlin, 14.3.21