Standing firm against Tehran's threats

In its Editorial on April 13, 2006, "Iran's challenge," the Boston Globe contended that negotiations with the Iranian regime to grant it security guarantees and economic benefits and compensation in return for halting its pursuit of nuclear weapons may be a way out of the current impasse where the belligerent regime of the clerical dictatorship has now come forth and announced uranium enrichment.

Unfortunately, the Boston Globe, and a chorus of others in the Council on Foreign Relations and other amoral “realists” are wrong. They seek to avoid the worst case scenario but will gain dishonor and war too as Winston Churchill once said of Neville Chamberlain. The mullahs ruling Iran and the regime's loyal guard will take the benefits the would-be appeasers will offer them and then seek more because they see this gesture as a sign of weakness, which it is. There is no way out of this impasse but firmness.

I suggest we put aside any qualms we may have about paying the price for our security: namely, isolate and de-legitimise the Iranian theocratic dictatorship and support the Iranian people's resistance movement to this regime. Mark these words, weakness begets war. Ending appeasement and supporting democratic change by a suppressed Iranian society is the only way to deal with this regime and may be the only choice for securing world peace at this stage.

The first step should be to recognize the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) and the parliament-in-exile of National Council of Resistance of Iran as the voice of Iranians in international forums.