By CIARAN MCGRATH
November 1, 2022
The brutal deaths of several young women in Iran have sparked waves of protests but one US-based campaigner warns the brutal regime will not relinquish power without a fight.
Iran is on the brink of a full-scale revolution, but without Western support, its Islamic Fundamentalist rulers are likely to inflict a terrible death toll on its population before being forced from power, an Iranian-American campaigner has warned. Fury has been building ever since the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, arrested for not wearing the hijab or headscarf, in accordance with Government rules, on September 16.According to Iran Human Rights, at least 234 people have been killed as of October 25, 2022, including Nika Shakarami, 16, Hadis Najafi, 22, and Sarina Esmailzadeh, 16. Asked whether a revolution was now in the pipeline, Dr Majid Sadeghpour, political director of The Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) told Express.co.uk: “Unambiguously, without a doubt, the desire is clear.
“In other words, this regime is bankrupt culturally, is bankrupt religiously, is bankrupt economically. It has no answer for the populace and this regime has been on a collision course with mankind for decades. “The brunt of it has been borne by the people closest to this regime, which is the people of Iran. There have been more than 120,000 executions. It has expanded the slowly outside of Iran with the terrorism as you see in the world.
“But then you have the nuclear issue. This regime unless it is overthrown by the people of Iran, will continue to become a bigger and bigger threat for all of you.” Asked to guess the number of people killed in the latest protests, Dr Sadeghpour suggested the 234 figure was likely a significant underestimate.
Describing the attitude of the Iranian people to the theocracy, he added: “It is one of absolute hatred of the regime in Iran.
“The slogans are very clear, ‘we will fight we will die. We will reclaim our Iran’.
“They are dying. Iran has the highest number of executions per capita in the world.
“A regime in charge wouldn’t do that unless its people absolutely did not want it.”
Referring to the recent wave of repression, Mr Sadeghpour said: “These are predatory creatures by nature – it’s in their DNA. “They killed her because she was a woman, they especially brutally beat her because she resisted.” Misogyny was “deeply ingrained” in the Iranian regime, Mr. Sadeghpour stressed.
He added: “With Ms Amini’s refusal to wear a hijab crystallizing the situation perfectly against her. “Just as anti-Semitism fueled the fascist views of the Nazis, misogyny fuels the fascist views of these predators in Iran.
He said: “Young women of Iran today are exactly fighting against the very thing that they have been seeking since before the 1979 revolution, which is the choice to either wear or not wear the hijab, to gather or not gather, to speak or not to speak.
“It is their choice, it is an inalienable right of mankind.
“And the girls in Iran historically have been in the forefront because they are being oppressed.”
Asked about the future, Mr Sadeghpour said: “Nobody has a crystal ball but we do have a blueprint of what it looks like. “Stepping back to Syria for example, the missing factor was not the breadth of uprising against the regime, the majority of people wanted that regime gone.
“But the regime did not fall in large part because there was not an organised opposition to the regime that the world could rally around.
“And the brutality that you saw in Syria, primarily came from the regime in Iran. “In other words, they’re the ones who showed Assad how to do this.”
Within Iran, if the regime ceased its brutality, it would be overthrown within days, Mr Sadeghpour predicted. He added: “To use the words of Mike Pompeo, the former director of the CIA and former US Secretary of State, the missing factor in United States policy, even with the maximum pressure policy, was a lack of support for Iran’s organised opposition.”
Iran’s goal was what Mr Sadeghpour called a “Jeffersonian democracy”. However, he emphasised: “ The question is, at what costs?
