‘America First’ means standing with Iranians for regime change

OPINION:

When I was the mayor of New York City, I boldly declared it the capital of the world. The title became authoritative only when St. John Paul II intoned it during his visit in 1995.

The city again became the crossroads of global decision-making last month, during the United Nations General Assembly.

Thousands of supporters of a free, secular Iran gathered across from the United Nations to deliver a clear message of resolve to the brave men and women fighting for freedom against the regime of terror in Iran, and to show the world an organized, principled alternative ready to lead.

I had the honor of speaking before them again and saw thousands of faces of determined Iranians who have consistently protested the presence of the Iranian regime’s leader since 1981.

Such a message is entirely consistent with President Trump’s views on the regime of terror. Having stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Iranian freedom fighters for 16 years in their long quest for justice and freedom, I can say that it is certainly consistent with mine.

For more than 40 years, Western capitals were trapped in an exhausting cycle of diplomatic overtures, unearned concessions and appeasement. With Mr. Trump’s historic “maximum pressure” policy, the White House broke that mold, demonstrating that the regime of terror responds only to strength.

The European Union and Britain have since taken long-overdue steps toward designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity, following the precedent established during Mr. Trump’s first term.

The Trump administration has unified the world’s true democracies to cease any support for Tehran’s regional aggression and economy, intensifying the economic and political strain on the regime.

Yet economic isolation, while necessary, is not enough. The true pressure threatening the mullahs’ regime comes from within. Public outrage has sparked successive nationwide rebellions, severing the Iranian people from the ruling theocracy.

These uprisings were accelerated by the growth of an organized, fearless network of “Resistance Units,” spearheaded inside the country by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK.

Defying arrest, torture and capital charges, these units have punctured the regime’s aura of invincibility. Through coordinated defiance, they have demonstrated that Iranians reject both the current religious dictatorship and any return to monarchical despotism.

Over many years, I have become intimately acquainted with the democratic coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, which includes the MEK. I have attended its rallies, addressed its conventions and spoken at length with organizers and activists, many of whom have personally suffered at the hands of the mullahs’ regime.

I have stood next to them and fellow lovers of freedom despite threats of assassination. I have feared no evil because of the righteousness of their cause.

Their threat to the regime is best evidenced by Tehran’s treatment of them as its main enemy, and it has been singularly focused on eliminating well over 100,000 of them in the past five decades.

Yet they remain the most effective force capable of bringing down the regime. The ayatollah and his chief allies have publicly announced this repeatedly.

It is the MEK that first uncovered the regime’s surreptitious nuclear enrichment program, its hidden uranium and delivery systems capable of reaching all of Europe and its atomic scientists accelerating its development of nuclear arms in violation of the reckless Obama agreement.

It is the MEK that helped organize — from both inside and outside Iran — the protests that exposed the regime’s brutality. Though the regime responded by slaughtering thousands of protesters, these events permanently turned both the Iranian people and the global community against Tehran’s rulers.

Although targeted actions and deterrence diminish Tehran’s regional proxy networks, lasting peace requires fundamental change in Iran. The moral authority and ultimate responsibility for regime change belong to the Iranian people.

Mr. Trump’s firmness, including maximum economic pressure, has weakened the regime, but Western policy must now take the next step and politically empower the agents of change already on the ground.

The corrupt and murderous dictatorship of the shah and its notorious secret police, SAVAK, appeared to be too much of a U.S.-orchestrated, violent autocracy in the 1970s. Indeed, by suppressing the nationalist and intellectual movements, blatantly plundering the wealth of Iran and viciously persecuting his enemies, the shah paved the way for the ascendancy of the Islamic fundamentalists.

These fundamentalists have been the world’s epicenter of terror for decades.

Tehran’s dictatorship cannot be reformed or appeased. The return to the dictatorship of the shah is unrealistic and would lead to further war within Iran and with its numerous ethnic minorities.

The “America First” policy embraces the United States without sacrificing American lives and treasure. It extends political support to Iran’s organized democratic alternative, led by NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi and her Ten-Point Plan for the transitional period.

It guarantees free elections, universal suffrage, full freedom for women, the abolition of Shariah, the separation of religion and state and a non-nuclear democratic republic. This would align the Iranian people’s rightful aspirations with Washington’s strategic interests.

• Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001.