Overthrow at the Cost of Destroying Iran
Their main goal is overthrowing at the cost of destroying Iran. They have named him the man who insists on waging war against Iran, Saeed Ghasemi Nejad and his assistants who work at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and have a publication called Fereydoon that supports the restoration of the monarchy.
They say that the profiteers of sanctions and opponents of reviving the JCPOA are an interconnected international network with one foot inside and the other outside. If inside, figures like the Stability Front and Saeed Jalili obstruct the agreement, their foreign counterparts are anti-JCPOA sanction seekers who do not shy away from military attacks on Iran and lobby with all centers and power institutions against Iran to achieve their goals.
In one of his latest comments opposing the nuclear agreement, Saeed Ghasemi Nejad stated that this agreement would lead to the unblocking of funds and an increase in Iran’s revenues, but none of this money would reach the people, so it should be opposed.
Meanwhile, during the short period of opening after the JCPOA under Rouhani, many positive events occurred in terms of foreign investment and purchasing the country’s needs, which had a direct or indirect impact on people’s lives that cannot be denied. The foundation for which Ghasemi Nejad works is known for its unconditional support of the Israeli government.
However, what fewer people know about is the arrangements and actions of this foundation to involve the United States in a war against Iran, for which Ghasemi Nejad is the main advocate. Some inaccurate and excessively exaggerated reports from this institution are considered the basis for the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA and even threaten war against Iran.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which played a key role in imposing banking sanctions against Iran, advised the Trump administration to sanction Iran Khodro and Saipa and their subsidiaries, which control about 90% of Iran’s car market. This foundation claimed a close connection between these two automakers and Iran’s military enterprises and stated that sanctioning them would be another major step towards completing the maximum pressure policy.
The Pinochet-Supporting Liberal
Ghasemi Nejad considers himself a liberal and freedom-lover, but the path he follows, namely supporting economic sanctions and military pressure against Iran, is in stark contrast to the policy of real critic groups within the Islamic Republic, from labor activists to teachers, women, human rights groups, women’s rights activists, social activists, reformists, nationalists, and they claim that there is no opposition against power in Iran, and therefore only economic sanctions and war can lead to the fall of the regime.
They claim that every critic and opponent inside is a puppet and that is why they are hostile to all critical currents within the regime and, by resorting to various tools, especially bullying on social media, seek to discredit and distrust the people towards them with the aim of removing them from the scene.
Ghasemi Nejad supports the 2003 US military attack on Iraq and, in an article titled ‘Why America Will Attack Iran,’ implicitly encourages this country to carry out military operations in his homeland. In an article in Telangor titled ‘What Lenin Teaches Us,’ he praises Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his theory of democratic centralism, and at times describes Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, as better than Salvador Allende.
He supported the massacre of Egyptian demonstrators after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s coup in 2013, writing on his Facebook page that he thought it was his duty to thank the Egyptian army for cleansing the streets of criminal Islamic fundamentalists.
The End Justifies the Means
Over the past decade, Ghasemi Nejad has often displayed his warmongering views in articles, often relying on clearly incorrect reasoning. For example, in various articles before the signing of the JCPOA, he repeatedly claimed that Iran has a military nuclear program, and therefore military confrontation is inevitable. What this movement does not understand is the human, financial, and crippling costs of sanctions that have weighed heavily on the shoulders of the Iranian people in recent years, to the point that if the agreement does not reach a conclusion, it is not far from failure.
More importantly, when such a movement defends the intensification of sanctions and makes every effort to continue them, how can one expect them not to defend military attacks whose result is undoubtedly the human casualties of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent citizens and deadly human and economic damages? They deliberately do not refer to the inhumane aspects of military attacks and cleverly pass by them to avoid being questioned about them.
They say the sanctions should intensify so that the level of public dissatisfaction increases and an overthrow occurs, or the country reaches a deadlock situation that can be overthrown with a military attack. Their enmity with the Islamic Republic is so great that they do not see anything called the people and Iran, and they have no qualms about using any tool and pressure, even at the cost of crushing the people and destroying the homeland. It is said that the tangible result of Saeed Ghasemi Nejad and his associates’ efforts, in addition to accessing high-paying jobs and huge budgets, is fabricating false stories about Iran in service of pressure to create a military confrontation.