The footprint of a crime

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Ali Khamenei, Iran’s religious dictator, posted a bold photograph on his official website showing President Trump on a golf course on January 22, 2021, captioned “Revenge is inevitable.”

On February 25, 2023, Brigadier General Hossein Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force that is listed on the U.S. blacklist, declared, “God willing, we will be able to kill Trump and Pompeo.”

“On that night (during the missile strike on the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq), we could have killed a thousand Americans if we had wanted to, but they were just soldiers, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. However, Trump, Pompeo, and McKenzie need to be killed,” he added, as reported by Asre Iran and Tasnim.

Ahmad Hamzeh, a member of the Iranian parliament, announced during a session that “on behalf of the people of Kerman, we offer a three-million-dollar cash reward to anyone who kills Trump,” (semi-official ISNA news agency, January 21, 2020). Following a 2022 assassination attempt on novelist Salman Rushdie, the Kayhan newspaper, echoing Khamenei’s rhetoric, stated, “Taking revenge on the perpetrators and criminals on American soil is not difficult and, after this, Trump and Pompeo will feel increasingly threatened” (Kayhan newspaper, August 12, 2023).

Numerous other threats were issued by high-ranking officials of the Iranian regime, vowing severe retribution for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, described as the architect of terrorism in the Middle East.

While there is no direct evidence linking Khamenei’s threats to the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, it is evident that terrorism has long been a tactic used to further the coercive policies of this religious dictatorship.

Consider, a few months prior to Hamas’s assault on Israel, Khamenei proclaimed during his Iranian New Year speech that “we will stay on the line of resistance,” which was followed by Hamas’s attacks on Israel and the subsequent bombing of Gaza, resulting in the deaths of approximately forty thousand Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, before the failed assassination attempt on Alejo Vidal-Quadras, former vice president of the European Parliament and president of the International Committee in Search of Justice on November 9, 2023, the theocratic regime of Iran had already placed him on their foreign ministry’s sanctions list. Immediately after surviving the attempt, and before being transferred to the hospital, unable to speak due to a bullet wound to his lower jaw, he managed to communicate to the police via his phone that the Iranian regime was his only adversary.

Further investigations revealed that the orchestrator of this crime had connections back to Iran. The fugitive assailant, a French national, had been hired for the assassination. Recently, an Iranian woman was arrested in the Netherlands, accused of financing this assassination attempt. According to a report from the Frankfurter Allgemeine two days ago, the Iranian regime employs criminal organizations to carry out its assassinations.

The Religious Dictator at a Complete Deadlock

Amidst a series of failures both within Iran and on the international stage, Khamenei finds himself in dire need of demonstrating power more than ever before to sustain his domestic forces and regional proxies. In the recent presidential elections, despite Khamenei’s desperate pleas and various coercive tactics, voter turnout was meager, with perhaps only about 10 percent participation. This low turnout reflects a widespread boycott of the elections in Iran, the regime’s failure in its repression efforts, and the increasing strength—both in numbers and impact—of resistance units. Thousands of these units, affiliated with the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (the central force of the democratic alternative NCRI), managed to disrupt the regime’s electoral process with twenty thousand promotional operations within just one month. Khamenei is acutely aware that this organized force could ignite a significant uprising that would threaten his rule.

Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and presidential candidate pinpointed the Iranian regime as the root cause of myriad issues in the Middle East during her speech on July 17 at the Republican National Convention, stating, “Look at the Middle East, every issue in this region traces back to the Islamic Republic. The Iranian dictatorship is bankrolling and arming groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

On June 29, at the Free Iran 2024 World Summit held in Paris, France, former Vice President Mike Pence delivered an impassioned speech, highlighting the resilience and strength of the Iranian resistance movement.

“One of the biggest lies the ruling regime sold to the wider world is that there is no alternative to the status quo. But you all know there is an alternative, well-organized, fully prepared, perfectly qualified, and popularly supported alternative called the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose main component is called the MEK,” Pence said. “Please join me in thanking Maryam Rajavi for your outstanding leadership. Mrs. Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan for the future of Iran will extend political, social, and economic equality to women. It will allow all citizens to prosper and thrive in a free market economy. The Ten-Point Plan will ensure the freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly, and guarantee the right of every Iranian to live, to work, to worship, according to the dictates of their conscience in freedom”.

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