Recently, there has been an upswing in the activities of the IR Regime’s opposition groups in the Diaspora and the meetings and the declarations are now more operational in nature than theoretical.
While we should applaud the efforts of the Iranians in Diaspora whenever they get together and listen to each other and engage in the democratic process, one should always wonder who these people are and what they are up to. Setting aside the people who have enmity towards others and are still fighting the decades-old battles, there are definitely two distinct points of view out there.
After listening to several interviews with the people who attended the meetings or declined to attend, people who signed the final declarations and those who didn’t, I came away with a simple way of figuring out who is who and what they are up to.
There are two basic questions that we should ask the well-meaning opposition to figure out which camp they are in. First question is, who are “The Greens” and who are their leaders, and second question is, what does a “Free Referendum” mean?
If the answer to the first question is that, “The Greens are basically the people who said, “Where is my vote” and their leaders are Mousavi, Karroubi, and maybe Khatami,” then we are dealing with Reformers, the people who believe that only if the votes were counted properly, Mousavi would have been able to enforce the constitution and fix the system.
But, if the answer is that The Greens are the ones that on day 2 and day 3 of the 2009 protests changed their slogans to “Marg bar Dictator, and No to Gaza, No to Lebanon, Only Iran” and also they do not have a recognizable leader, then we are dealing with the people who want the Regime to be gone.
As for the second question regarding the “Referendum” so that the Iranian people can freely decide what type of government they would like to have, if the answer is that, “The “Referendum” can take place while the Regime is in power, and the Regime will allow such “Referendum” as a result of the peaceful protests,” then again we are dealing with the Reformers. Their main argument is also this. Iranians will not (and should not) pay the high price that the Syrians are paying today and any violent uprising against the Regime will result in the disintegration of Iran and all the doom and gloom that goes with it.
But if the response is along the lines of, “In order to have a “Free Referendum,” first, all the political prisoners should be freed, then we need several months to get mobilized inside Iran, and we need to have access to the media inside Iran to get our message out, and we also need money to counter the Regime’s money to buy votes, and we need international monitors to not only supervise the “Referendum” but also to count the votes, and there is no way in hell that the IR Regime would allow any of this!” Therefore a “Free Referendum” can only take place only and only after the Regime is gone.
