Isolate the regime

My letter to the editor was published in the Evening Standard on June 17, 2009.

Here is the full letter I sent in:

Today, ‘elections’ are not the real issue at hand in Iran. Everyone knows that elections are neither fair nor free there. There are no basic political freedoms and right to organise. Candidates are selected by the Supreme Leader and unelected Guardian Council and are chosen from amongst pillars of the regime. Mousavi - now branded a ‘reformist’ - was prime minister during the 80s when thousands were executed.

Often with regards Iranian politics one must look below the surface to see what’s really going on. The infighting between the regime’s factions has intensified. Both sides refuse to back down for now but this has nothing to do with people’s lives. The people of Iran have shown that they have their own demands; they want the Islamic regime to go. And it has to go. Thirty years of medievalism and brutality is enough. What this infighting has done and will continue to do is further provide the people of Iran with the opportunity to fight for real freedom and equality.

In all this, one thing is clear. There is a mass movement in Iran that is going to bring this regime to its knees and break the back of the political Islamic movement internationally. Now is the time for people in the west to exert pressure on western governments to politically isolate the regime rather than excuse and legitimise it. Like racial apartheid in the former South Africa, a regime of sexual apartheid must be proclaimed a crime against 21 century humanity.

Maryam Namazie is spokesperson of the Worker-communist Party of Iran.