Mr. Dini's visit to Iran is taking place while, contrary to the remarks by the Italian Foreign Ministry officials, there have been no positive "developments" in the behavior of the Tehran regime. In its April meeting in Luxembourg, the European Union made any progress or improvement in relations contingent upon the clerical regime's respect for "international law" and its refraining from terrorism. Since then at least 24 Iranian dissidents have been assassinated abroad by the mullahs' death squads.
In 1997, alone, more than 200 persons were executed in public. No less than 138 of them, including seven who were stoned, were executed during Khatami's tenure. Last week, the regime's Head of the Judiciary, confirmed that medieval and inhuman punishments such as stoning do take place under the mullahs and that these punishments are part and parcel of the laws of the state.
At the same time, in a move, unprecedented since the anti-Islamic fatwa against Rushdie was issued, the Prosecutor General, Foreign Ministry, Speaker of the Majlis, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, and other officials of the regime emphasized on the anniversary of Rushdie's death decree this year that the fatwa was irrevocable and that it needs to be carried out. Some time ago, Kamal Kharrazi, Mr. Dini's host in Tehran, also insisted that the death decree for Rushdie could never be rescinded.
Last summer and autumn, after Khatami's election, in a statement, the majority of deputies in the Parliament of Italy as well as 115 senators called for decisiveness against the Khomeini regime and support for the Iranian Resistance and its President-elect Maryam Rajavi.
Western countries' trade and political ties with the Iranian regime have effectively helped Iran's ruling theocracy to continue its crimes against the Iranian people and persist in its enmity to peace and tranquillity in the region.
Engulfed in acute political, economic, and social crises, and unable to confront the growing popular resistance, the clerical regime is devoid of any legitimacy among the people of Iran. Any political and economic investment in this regime is doomed to fail. The growth of popular uprisings and expansion of students and workers' protests in recent months attest to this truth.
Representative office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran-Italy
February 26, 1998
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