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Majid Mohammadi, writer, media analyst, and online teacher, spoke to an April 24th Middle East Forum Webinar (video) in an interview with Dexter Van Zile, editor of the Middle East Forum’s Focus on Western Islamism, about “the confrontation between the Iranian regime and human rights activists in the Iranian diaspora in the West.” The following is a summary of his comments:
During his youth, Mohammadi changed from being religiously devout as a student to becoming disaffected with religion in his twenties. He became a critic of the regime in his thirties, and emigrated to the U.S. after the government jailed and killed dissidents during the late 1990s. Although there was a reformist movement in Iran earlier in that decade, the crackdown that followed gave birth to the anti-Islamist movement that has grown ever since.
Since Mohammadi has been in the U.S., he has devoted himself to teaching, writing, and granting interviews, all for anti-Islamist causes spread by the three branches of the dissident movement in the Iranian diaspora.
The first is a leftist, socialist, “woke-ist” group that has been silent for the past half year but is now emerging to make pronouncements against Crown Prince Pahlavi. This branch has been shrinking, and “they are not leading anything.” The second is a “reformist Islamist” group trying to differentiate itself by making pronouncements against the regime. They do not want the government to survive, but they experience a high rate of recidivism to Islamism. The third branch comprises “regular people” in the U.S. who are expanding the ranks of the anti-Islamist movement in America. Mostly Iranian immigrants, they migrated not for economic reasons, but as “social immigrants” exhausted by the public enforcement of sharia. The Islamization process pushed them to immigrate to the West to find a “real and regular” life.
Although generation Z, Iranians born in the late nineties, actively tries to change the government, it is not large enough to counter the regime’s crackdown apparatus. According to official Iranian estimates, of the 700,000 who took to the streets to demonstrate against the regime, the judiciary arrested “more than 80,000.” Not surprisingly, the activists have inspired sympathy in Europe and the U.S.
The Iranian diaspora’s motivation is in pursuit of five agendas: (1) dismantling the regime’s lobby in the U.S. and Europe, (2) neutralizing regime propaganda that is being funneled through Islamic centers and mosques, (3) applying “maximum pressure” on the Western governments to isolate the regime, (4) preventing the revival of the JCPOA negotiations and instead bringing about an increase in sanctions, and (5) bringing about a designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terror organization and subjecting it to sanctions.
The Iranian people’s goal is to neutralize regime propaganda and see the IRGC designated as a terrorist entity. Animus against the IRGC is so widespread within Iran that young people attending soccer games chant slogans against it. Protesting girls who are vilified by the clergy as “sluts” for not wearing a hijab chant that it is the clerics, not they, who are perverts. Even though Europeans are generally sympathetic to placing the IRGC on the terrorist list, many countries have failed to follow through. But the push for women’s rights will not end until women can dress in public as they please.
NIAC president Trita Parsi was recently disinvited from a speaking engagement at the State University of New York at Stony Brook because of Iranian American activism.
“According to some estimates, there are 5 to 7 million Iranians in Europe and North America, and it is growing. . . . All Iranians are very active in voting. They are active in business, they are active in politics, they are active in culture, so they will have a real impact.” With Congressional members in attendance, New York recently held an Iranian parade with the movement’s theme “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
Iranian Americans target organizations in America that use Western freedoms against the West to serve as a front for the Iranian regime. One such organization is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Its president, Trita Parsi, was recently disinvited from a speaking engagement at the State University of New York at Stony Brook because of Iranian American activism.
As recently as a year ago, Iranian activism in the U.S. and Europe was limited. Now, of the millions of the Iranians in the West, 500,000 to700,000 are making their presence known at demonstrations on the streets of cities such as Berlin, Toronto, and Sydney, Australia. The increasing push by the Iranian diaspora to publicize its opposition to the regime has had an impact on the media, celebrities, and governments. While leftists in the U.S. praise the hijab, celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Kim Kardashian have come out in support of Iranian women compelled to wear the hijab or face arrest by the Islamist government’s forces. Canada, Germany, and France have cancelled Quds rallies, where anti-Western and anti-Israel chants are the norm, because they fear it will draw Iranians to fight each other on opposing sides.
Non-Iranians who support the counter-Islamist movement can show their support by opening any channel that could influence public opinion in the U.S. and Europe.
Decades ago, most Americans had a “monolithic” view of Iran in thinking that all of Iran was hostile to the West. Today, the Iranian diaspora has dispelled that myth by publicizing the fact that the people are not behind the mullahs. There is increasing evidence that many in the IRGC are themselves “demoralized” by their oppression of the Iranian people. Even Iranian women in long chador robes and those who wear hijabs are showing up at the rallies against the regime. Outrage at the poisoning of 20,000 girls in 500 Iranian schools in chemical attacks by a regime desperate to quash resistance further indicates that the government has “lost its social base.”
The Iranian diaspora’s success in spreading the movement’s causes in the West is a reason for optimism, despite the Biden administration’s inaction against the regime. The three layers that proved effective for the activists include: (1) seeking to affect public opinion by circumventing officials and bypassing the mainstream media’s marginalization of activist efforts, (2) generating media coverage of celebrities engaged by activists on behalf of the cause, and (3) acquiring visibility vis-à-vis government officials. Non-Iranians who support the counter-Islamist movement can show their support by opening any channel that could influence public opinion in the U.S. and Europe. The people of Iran are encouraged to know they are not alone in their fight for freedom.
