I
ask him about the National Ubertion Army's strategy. He explains: "The
Khomeini regime's brutal repression has turned our society into an enormous
prison. Our objective is to pave the way for a nationwide uprising by the
people of Iran to overthrow the regime. But forthe people to pour out of
their homes and cry out in protest, the walls of repression must first be
breached. This will be possible only after Khomeini's apparatus of war and
repression has been destroyed, and this is what the NLA is doing. Mr. Massoud
Rajavi (the Leader of the Iranian Resistance and Commander in Chief of the
NLA) puts this in clearer terms in his message on the formation of the NLA:
`Before all else, the National Liberation Army has the task of waging an
all-out war on the repressive and warmongering apparatus of the Khomeini
regime to pierce it, shatter it and march forward, in order to break the
spell of Khomeini's repres. A university professor turned military commandersion
and,, pave the way to a general uprising.'
This definition leads to the assumption that such an uprising should start in Tehran. Why, then, are the NLA operations concentrated in the western regions of Iran? With a, patience characteristic of his former profession, Commander Zakeri calmly and clearly answers the question: "In Iran, war and repression are flip sides of the same coin. Without the war to cover the repression, Khomeini couldn't rule for a single day. All the executions, torture and repression and the nationwide Resistance against the regime are overshadowed by the war. Thus, Khomeini's agents of war and repression are n essence identical. This means that striking at Khomeini's war machine directly affects the repre,ssion, and by the same token, every NLA assault on the regime's forces whether in the west or elsewhere has its own role in breaking the spell of repression in Tehran and other cities."
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