Keep the regime fully accountable for fomenting terrorism abroad and repression at home
WASHINGTON, DC, DC, UNITED STATES, August 1, 2025 — The U.S. Representative Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US), citing the joint statement issued by the United States, the United Kingdom, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden, condemning the Iranian regime’s sustained state-directed threats and malign activities in Europe and North America, calls for specific measures to counter the Iranian regime’s threat.
This transatlantic stance is a key step in exposing and confronting the regime’s long-standing campaign of terrorism and intimidation, targeting “journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials in Europe and North America.”
According to the Department of State on July 5, 2018, “Two Iranian operatives were arrested on charges of terrorism by Albanian authorities”, for a bomb plot against the March 2018 New Year gathering of thousands of Iranian opposition members, the MEK, in Tirana. In December 2018, the Government of Albania expelled Iran’s Ambassador, Gholamhossein Mohammadnia, and the MOIS station chief in Albania, Mostafa Roudaki, for planning terrorist activities against the members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). In January 2020, the Government of Albania expelled two other Iranian diplomats also for planning terrorist activities against the Iranian Resistance. The Albanian Government eventually closed the Iranian embassy in September 2022.
According to media reports and reaffirmed by H.Res.374 (https://bit.ly/4fkIvFR) of the US. House of Representatives, in June 2018, European authorities foiled a bomb plot masterminded by a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, targeting the Iranian Resistance rally near Paris, which was attended by nearly a hundred thousand people, including 600 political dignitaries from close to 70 countries, among them senior U.S. and European officials. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), was the keynote speaker.
Germany extradited Assadi to Belgium on October 10, 2025, to stand trial along with his co-conspirators. A French diplomatic source told Agence France Presse that “the head of operations at the (Iranian) intelligence ministry ordered it.”
Then U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo issued a statement saying that “The scale of this plot, which involved arrests of numerous suspects across Europe — including in Belgium, France, and Germany — reminds us that Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” Secretary Pompeo also “accused Iran of using its embassies to plot extremist attacks in Europe,” according to the Associated Press.
On February 4, 2021, a Belgian court sentenced Assadi to 20 years in prison. This marked the first time an Iranian diplomat had been sentenced in Europe for terrorist activities. On May 26, 2023, bowing to Tehran’s despicable hostage diplomacy, Assadi was released in a prisoner swap between Belgium and Iran, in exchange for Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele. The NCRI called the prisoner swap “a shameful ransom to terrorism and hostage-taking.” Indeed, this episode emboldened the clerical regime’s hostage diplomacy and allowed it to get away with blatant acts of terrorism in Europe and elsewhere.
In another case of Tehran’s plots at the hearts of Western countries, the United States Government arrested two Iranian nationals in August 2018 who had acted on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) to conduct covert surveillance in the United States. The officials of the NCRI were the targets of the two MOIS agents’ surveillance for a target package, which, according to the Department of Justice Federal complaint, may have included “apprehension, recruitment, cyber exploitation, or capture/kill operations.” The agents pleaded guilty and were sentenced to imprisonment.
The only viable solution is for the international community to recognize the Iranian people’s right to confront and overthrow this tyrannical regime, and to support their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic in Iran.
We call on the signatories of the joint statement today to take swift actions to defuse Tehran’s terrorism threat and:
1. Close all the regime’s embassies, diplomatic posts, offices, and UN missions. Identify and expel the regime agents who facilitate terrorism in any way or shape, including using the cover of diplomatic impunity or posing as “experts.”
2. Designate the IRGC, the MOIS, and their associated organizations as foreign terrorist entities and swiftly implement the resulting punitive measures.
3. Keep the regime fully accountable for fomenting terrorism abroad and repression at home.
4. Stand on the side of the Iranian people and resistance, who have been the main victims of Tehran’s terror. Recognize their right to overthrow the regime as the only sure way to end Tehran’s terrorism.