The continued appeasement of Iran

Tuesday, 13th May 2008

Despite last week’s Appeal Court judgment instructing the British government to de-proscribe the Iranian resistance group the PMOI (also known as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization) which I reported here, Britain is still on its craven knees before the tyrants of Iran. The Tehran Times reports:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned British Ambassador Geoffrey Adams to ‘strongly protest’ against a UK Court of Appeal ruling that supported the removal of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization from Britain’s list of banned terror organizations…
Adams rejected claims that Britain had revised its policy on the MKO, saying, ‘We still regard the organization as a terrorist group.’ He expressed support for Iran’s view on the MKO’s ‘terrorist nature’ and said he would convey Iran’s protest to the British government. ‘As the British secretary for foreign affairs earlier stated, the government believes that the MKO’s terror acts are shameful and Britain’s official policy is based on having no relations with this group,’ the ambassador added.

To repeat: the Court of Appeal upheld the decision by POAC (the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission) that the PMOI should be de-proscribed on the grounds that it renounced violence altogether in 2001; POAC found the government’s decision to proscribe it ‘perverse’. Among other things, POAC said:

That the repressive nature of the present regime in Iran and its sponsorship of terrorism was something that the Secretary of State should take into account, certainly in the exercise of his discretion as to whether or not to maintain the proscription...That the democratic nature of the PMOI and the fact that the PMOI has provided information in relation to the Iranian regime’s nuclear projects should be given account and its importance should not be underestimated.

Indeed. In light of the fact that Iran declared war upon the west in 1979, has been pursuing that war ever since through acts of state-sponsored terrorism against western interests, has been killing British and coalition soldiers in Iraq, has announced its intention to destroy Israel and is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons to hold the west to ransom, the grovelling of the British ambassador in front of a dressing-down by that enemy — indeed, the very fact that we still have an ambassador to Iran — is beyond shameful. It is treacherous to this country's own interests.