Iran: The Mullahs’ Legacy of Destruction

From the New York Sun, 2/5/03:

The five top men in power in Iran today–Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; the president of the assembly on the discretion of the state, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the head of the judiciary, Mohammad Hashemi Shahroudi; the secretary of the guardians council, Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, and President Mohammad Khatami–[have] occupied the highest positions in government for the past 24 years.

They held high positions when the American Embassy was taken over in Tehran in 1979 and 52 Americans were held hostage for 400 days; they held high positions when the American and French Embassies were attacked in Kuwait City in 1983, killing and wounding 91; they held high positions when a suicide bomb attack killed 49 and injured 120 at the American Embassy in Beirut that same year; they held high positions when 241 Americans and 56 French were killed at the American Marine base and French military barracks in Beirut in 1983; they held high positions when 16 Americans and seven others were killed as a result of a car bomb explosion next to the American Embassy annex in Beirut in 1984; they held high positions when in 1985 and 1986 a Kuwait Air flight, two TWA flights, and a Pan Am flight were hijacked in the Middle East, resulting in the death of 28 people, and they held high positions when the truck bomb explosion took place at the Khobar Towers, killing 19 American servicemen in 1996.

All of the above terrorist attacks were carried out at the instigation of Tehran’s ruling mullahs….

Since the 1980s the mullah regime has sought to acquire long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. These include chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons…. Today, North Koreans, Russians, and nuclear scientists and aeronautic engineers from other Eastern European and Central Asian countries are hard at work in Iran to make this dream come true….

The clerics are known to have executed over 120,000. According to Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, they executed 3,000 people in one night in 1988….

Today, more than 60% of Iranians live below the poverty line. Annual per capita income stands at $1,200.00. In 1978 it stood at $2,400.

The author of the column, Monouchehr Ganji, is founder and secretary-general of the Flag of Freedom Organization of Iran and author of Defying the Iranian Revolution.