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MEMRI Founder & President Yigal Carmon said in an interview with CBN News that was published online on November 5, 2024 that the Iranian regime and its proxies constitute a major threat to the West, that this is a problem the West must solve, and that the way to do it without launching a war is for the West to support Iran’s non-Persian ethnic groups – which include Arabs, Baloch, Kurds, Ahvazis, Azeris, and others – in their struggle against Iran’s Islamic regime. He said that these ethnic groups are true freedom fighters and that MEMRI has been giving them a platform.
Yigal Carmon: "Thank you for having me, Chris. Iran is a threat not only for Israel, but also for the West in general. Let me cite a few problems. First of all, they see America as the Great Satan and Israel as the small one. Then every speech ends up, full of 'Death to America, death to Israel.' It constitutes a menace on various levels. One is economic. They already stopped through their proxy, the Houthis, 60% of the traffic in the Red Sea. They hold a sword on the oil in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Bahrain... even as far as Azerbaijan, and got a fierce reaction. Then there is the security threat. One is missile that reach Europe, they have them. And they are trying to build ICBM missiles that reach America.
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"Then there is the nuclear, of course. And above that is the threat of terrorism beginning in '83 with the Marines and all along, Hizbullah and others. So, this has to be stopped somehow, this regime, it’s a Western problem to stop.
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"Can it be done without a war? The answer is absolutely yes. There is a very strange situation that Iran... Let me explain... is made up of 50% almost Farsis. Some of them are opponents of the regime, many, and some are the regime guard, the Ayatollah’s guard, the Islamist Shiites. The other 50% are the ethnic minorities, which are repressed for many years by the Islamic regime. And they struggle for their freedom, for rights, for autonomy, for Confederation. Some wants even independence. And guess what? They are being killed for years. And guess what? The West doesn’t help them. Iran has proxies. All the terrorist organizations are their focus. The West is not helping freedom fighters, true freedom fighters: Balochis, Ahwazis, Kurds and Azeris.
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"These four groups, ethnic groups, seek their freedom, fight for it. They need to be helped. This will remove the Ayatollah’s regime like that if the West helps them."
Interviewer: "You’re actually in touch with many of these leaders, what are they telling you?”
Carmon: "And we are even publishing, giving them a platform, publishing their material. Lately, we published an article by Dr. Aref Al Kaabi, who is the leader of the Ahwazis, in south of Iran all the region of the oil. Dr. Aref Al Kaabi wrote an article. ‘I have a dream, I have a dream.’ And he explained, what is the dream? It’s a beautiful article. A dream of peace and understanding and the freedom, freedom of the control from the crazy ayatollahs. That’s the only name for them. There is the head of the Balochis, Hyrbyair Marri. He also wrote in MEMRI. We gave him a platform about the plight of the Balochis that are repressed by the Iranian regime to the ground and killed. And there are the Kurds and the Azeris. We are in touch with all of them. We give them a platform. But it’s not a platform for presenting their positions, their dreams, their hopes. It is about help with money and weapons. It is not the war of America. It is their war for autonomy, confederation, and independence."
Interviewer: "Yigal, final question. What’s the bottom line for the West? What do they need to know?”
Carmon: "Well, they need to look at what they surely know. If you look at the CIA booklets of information, they know everything about the autonomy, about the ethnic groups, and they do nothing. It’s unbelievable. The Iranians have proxies. The West doesn’t have peoples that seek their support to have a peaceful Middle East without this regime.”
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