Maliki Urged to Resist Pressure From Iranian Mullahs

CNSNews.com
Thursday, 26 July 2006

CNSNews.com - Criticized by congressional Democrats for his refusal to condemn Hizballah, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faces other international challenges, especially the "increasing pressure from neighboring Iran," Middle East experts said this week.

"We know well that [Iran is] funding the insurgency in Iraq. They are fanning the flames of potential civil war in Iraq, and now, of course, and more ominously, they are also spreading their influence via their armed branch Hizballah and their armed branch Hamas into Lebanon and Palestine," said Struan Stevenson, a member of the European Parliament for Scotland during a meeting Tuesday of the Iran Policy Committee. The group is dedicated to regime change in Iran.

Stevenson also co-chairs the Friends of a Free Iran Inter-group in the European Parliament.

"Maliki must not bend the knee to any pressure from Tehran," Stevenson said. "He must stand up for the democratically elected government he represents."

Stevenson criticized the U.S. State Department's decision to place the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) and related groups on its list of international terrorist organizations. That decision was "crazy," he said.

"We've decided to hamstring them. We've decided to shackle them. We've put the MEK, and, here in the United States, even the National Council for Resistance, on the terror list without any justification," Stevenson said. "They're on the terror list without any history of committing any terrorist acts."

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the MEK was expelled from Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The group was placed on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups in 1997 for advocating the overthrow of the Iranian regime.

At this point in history, the Bush administration must ensure that Maliki understands his true allies and enemies, Stevenson said.

"We should be telling Prime Minister Maliki that the democratically-elected government in Iraq is something that we in the West support ... and that he must not allow the influence from the mullahs to start diverting him from a democracy course. That means he must listen to those people who say you really have to protect the Iranian opposition," Stevenson said.