This week, 23 former top U.S. officials penned a
letterto President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming
administration, reiterating the “shortfalls of the Joint Comprehensive Program
of Action (JCPOA).”
The letter
also urged the administration to meet with the Paris-based National Council ofResistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled Iranian opposition group that is also
known as the MEK. The letter calls for the U.S. government “to establish a
dialogue with Iran’s exiled resistance,” represented in part by the NCRI. The
writers argue:
Given the opportunity to engage directly with the NCRI,
unfiltered by regime propaganda, US officials will learn that in the 1980s, as
a political strategy to challenge Iran’s harsh fundamentalism that denies all
rights to women, the resistance adopted a policy of gender equality – rare in
the Muslim world – and elevated women to leadership roles.
It reads, in part:
President Obama expressed the hope that nuclear negotiations
would induce Iran’s leaders to act with greater consideration of American
interests. It is now clear that Iran’s leaders have shown no interest in
reciprocating the US overture beyond the terms of the JCPOA which gained them
significant rewards. Through their extremely high rate of executions at home,
and destructive sectarian warfare in support of the Assad regime in Syria and
proxy Shiite militias in Iraq, Iran’s rulers have directly targeted US
strategic interests, policies and principles, and those of our allies and
friends in the Middle East.
Among those who signed the letter were former
ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Kenneth
Blackwell; former Assistant Secretary of State Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr.;
Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity Linda Chavez; former NY Mayor Rudy
Giuliani; former Democratic NY Senator Joseph Lieberman; retired U.S. Army Col.
Wesley M. Martin; former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge; and former Democratic NJ Senator
Robert Torricelli.
It states that “to restore American influence and credibility in
the world, the United States needs a revised policy based on universally shared
norms and principles reflecting the ideals of peace and justice.” It adds the
need for “a policy highlighting, and demanding an end to, Iran’s domestic human
rights violations and malevolent regional actions will attract broad support
and generate needed leverage against Iran’s threatening behavior.”
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