The Iranian regime is a tyrannical dictatorship that must be eliminated as soon as possible.

They chant “death to Israel” and “death to America,” while arming terror proxies across the world. Their nefarious activities plague not only the entire Middle East region, but also Africa, Latin America and even Europe and the United States of America.

This brutal regime seeks to develop nuclear weapons, which they have no hesitation in using against innocent civilian men, women and children. After all, this regime believes that the Shia messiah known as the Mahdi will come when there is chaos in this world, so they reap and sow chaos wherever they can.

And they are executing young people in Iran en masse, not even sparing the country’s glorious athletes from being hanged from cranes. Among them are Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old wrestling champion who was executed on March 19; Sasan Azadvar, a 21-year-old karate champion who was executed on April 30; and Navid Afkari, a wrestling champion who was executed in September 2020.

The Iranian regime is also notorious for hanging victims of sexual violence from cranes. In several high-profile cases, Iran has executed female attempted rape victims who killed their attackers in self-defense. For example, 23-year-old Marzieh Nayeri was executed after she wounded her attacker during a 2021 sexual assault. Similarly, Reyhaneh Jabbari was executed in 2014 after killing an intelligence officer who attempted to sexually assault her.

The South Azerbaijani political groups have decided that enough is enough. They decided to unite and form a coalition, consisting of nine members, who will work together as a force to be reckoned with to address the Iranian regime’s anti-Azerbaijani sentiment.

It should be noted that like most of Iran’s ethnic minorities, South Azerbaijanis are deprived of the most basic ethno-national rights, including the right to study and work in their mother tongue. In some cases, there are South Azerbaijanis who were executed because they were deprived of access to a legal defense in their mother tongue.

For example, Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Azerbaijani mother, was executed in Iran’s Ardabil Central Prison on May 20. She was arrested while pregnant and charged with murdering her husband in a sham trial. If she had access to a legal defense in her mother tongue, the results would have been different.

The leadership of the South Azerbaijani community in 2022 united under the South Azerbaijani National Statehood Council, which seeks to ensure that their people are provided with basic human rights, minority rights and women’s rights and that their region is spared environmental devastation.

For the first couple of years, we worked on laying down the foundation for our future activities that include helping to create an environment to work with other ethno-national groups in Iran to tackle the Iranian regime’s brutality. After all, all of Iran’s ethno-national groups are in this together. The regime represses the Baloch, Al Ahwazi Arabs, Turkmen, Lors, Kurds, and other Iranian ethno-national groups just as much as they oppress South Azerbaijanis. If all of these ethno-national groups work together, it will be unfathomable that regime change won’t happen.

Our goal is regime change, for this regime is not reformable. This horrific regime, which massacred over 35,000 Iranians in January merely for seeking to live in a free Iran, will never permit Iran’s non-Persian ethno-national groups to run their own affairs at the provincial level, to study their own language and to preserve their ethnic heritage.

For decades, the Iranian regimes have been implementing cultural genocide against Iran’s ethno-national groups and democide against their own citizens, merely for seeking basic human, women’s and minority rights.

After three years of working on this issue, we came to the conclusion that we need to expand the council’s activity to include more Azerbaijani groups and prominent individuals. We have been in negotiations with different groups and prominent individuals for the past year, and we have agreed with most of them to join the council as of July.

The council is headed by a young South Azerbaijani lady, Pinar Shakir, who studied law and is currently residing in Canada. Our goal is to keep the council membership open to include as many Azerbaijani organizations and prominent individuals as possible, so long as they accept the charters of the council, which include the right of our people to form an independent South Azerbaijan in the future following a referendum.

The council believes in equal rights for all Iranians, minority rights for all of Iran’s ethno-national groups, gender equality, and a democratic system run through officials elected by the people.

Jerusalem Post: Goal of toppling the regime

The council supports all ethno-national groups uniting under one umbrella to achieve the common goal of toppling the regime. We believe that all non-Persian ethno-national groups must work together to find common ground to push back the Iranian government’s divide and rule policy. We should also work with Persians in order to obtain the goal of regime change, despite our different visions for a future Iran. 

We believe that a united front among all of Iran’s ethno-national groups is achievable through negotiations and respect for each ethno-national group’s territorial integrity. We understand that the Persian nationalist Iranian governments over the past 100 years have drawn up provincial lines intentionally creating ethnic friction between neighbors.

We believe we must respect the current provincial borders and deal with all the issues, all the problems created by the Iranian governments after the fall of the regime. The council has come to the understanding that negotiations should include giving ethnic rights in each majority ethno-national province to minorities. It should be done mutually.

Our next goal should be working with each other to push aside all the artificial animosities that the Iranian regime has created between our people and Western democracies, including Israel.

We don’t assign any particular country as our eternal enemy unless they do not recognize our right to exist as a free and independent nation. We hope and expect that free and democratic nations will help us to achieve our basic human ethnic rights and run our own affairs in the future, in an atmosphere free of Persian Aryan hegemony.

We must also remember that our highest priority should be to topple this regime that is an enemy of all humanity and is spreading terror across the world. The world should work with us to bring to an end a regime that executes young innocent people, including women and children, after less than an hour of sham trials.

What this regime is doing to the Iranian people is no different than what Assad used to do in Syria. Western democracies cannot claim to be pro-human rights on the one hand and close their eyes to the Iranian regime’s brutality on the other hand.

Human values should not be pushed under the rug because of cheap oil prices. Therefore, I call upon President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Western democracies to help Iran’s ethno-national groups topple this horrific regime that commits democide against its own people, cultural genocide against Iran’s ethno-national groups, and threatens world peace and regional security through its nuclear weapons program, ballistic missile program and terror proxies. 

Author: Ahmad Obali
Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-906641