Abbas Edalat, the Iranian-British distinguished professor of mathematics and computer sciences at Imperial College, has been summarily arrested by the Islamic Republican Guard on august 15 and has since imprisoned by the Islamic government’s Judiciary ministry. Déjà vu all over again, the government has not disseminated the exact charge or the trial date for Edalat. In the past fictitious scenarios and after years held in jail, the incarcerated victim has only been allowed to leave the country, when millions of dollars as ransom has first been paid. Edalat’s imprisonment-preceded with an ever intensifying and politically charged number of European and American scholars of Iranian descent apprehended-has led to grave concerns in the hearts and minds of up to five million expatriate Iranians abroad; they have second thoughts about travel dreams to Iran that would not any longer be forgotten that easily. All indications point to the cancellation or indefinite delays of the usual short home return of hundreds of thousand expats each year when they visit their elderlies and family members.
Ironically, Edalat advocating “peaceful dialogue” between IRI and the West particularly the U.S. and the U.K., has for two decades led a global campaign (CASMII) to condemn economic sanctions and/or military provocations, especially as overtly or covertly provoked by the U.S. and its allies the Saudi Arabian and Israeli gendarmes, against Iran. Similar 8-year long Iraqi proxy war of aggression against Iran, ironically strengthened the belligerent IRI regime while bringing catastrophic misery to the people of Iran since. The Iraq war inflicted a million dead, a few million injured including tens of thousands of civilians inflicted with chemical weapons licensed to Iraq, and over half a trillion dollars in Iran’s economic loss, for Iran. Analysts believed the war was imposed on Iran, in retaliation to the illegal act of taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, as well as the Americans feeling of the loss of Iran as their allies in the region.
After 40 years post the Islamic Republic reining ad hoc on Iran, the historic nation of 80 million is beleaguered with chronic corruptions, financial deficits and mismanagement, massive unemployment with almost half the population under the government declared poverty line, discriminations and religious and political persecutions, waste of tens of billion dollars in futile antiquated nuclear technology, and the regime’s waste of human and material resources elsewhere to divert attention from domestic failure and catastrophic misery while repressing the disillusioned populace under the name of fighting the bogus “great Satan”. Consequently, the desperate reactions to arrest, imprison, torture and slain (some labeled self-suicide while in jail) political prisoners of conscience and dual nationals, are the result of the Schizophrenic paranoid nature of the regime and its myriad entrenched parallel but fighting factions to grab or sustain power and wealth for a bit while more.
The 80 ton guerrilla unnoticed in the room remains the 150 painful years of longing of the people of Iran to fulfill their peaceful transformation of the nation for civil and constitutional rights, secular democracy, freedom, equality, transparency, accountability, and justice in a sovereign, secured, tranquil and dignified IRAN. The ever exorbitantly costly toll of American soldiers and local human lives and soon ten trillion dollars of the American tax payers money wasted and with no dividends in sight for them, is another collateral catastrophe in southwest Asia.
Hence, the merit and urgent need to “save the baby and the bath” per se, that is, to set up a non-governmental international tribunal to directly engage with independent NGOs inside Iran to facilitate bringing the people to the table is now. Immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners of conscience and the repatriations of those from abroad including Professor Abbas Edalat, securing guarantees for non-military interventions through the UN General Assembly, and devising a process for transformation of the sovereign country into a secular democracy, referendum and the new Constitution within one year, are the main three pillars of Iran pedestal to enact.
