Behind the Headlines/April 5

Jamshid Chalangi:

In tonight’s program we will look at the flooding disaster across Iran’s provinces of Lorestan and Khuzestan and ask if the Iranian regime has any plans at all to help the victims of this national tragedy.

Our guests tonight are Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh and Mohammad Nourizad.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

My greatest regret in life is how on earth our generation and the generation before us were deluded by Khomeini and his regime, even though we knew what kind of hypocrites the mullahs are.

We had a monarch who wanted to turn our country into the Japan of the Middle East but we called for his death and brought in Khomeini and his followers. This admission of guilt is somethingthat the two older generations of Iran have to live with as we have been led to welcome decades of miseries and calamities for our nation.

I only hope the younger and future generations of Iran will forgive us for our historic error of judgment.

You can see how the regime’s top officials have been enjoying the Nowruz holidays in foreign countries while our own nation has been mourning the deaths of its citizens in the flood.

Mohammad Nourizad:

I agree with Dr. Nourizadeh that we suffer form this guilty conscious for losing our senses and rationality in allowing this regime to come to power and become a curse on our nation.

I come across many young people who keep asking me why on earth we went onto the streets and shouted against the Shah and asked to be ruled by a mullah.

My answer to them is that if they were in our shoes in 1979 they would have done the same as the wider international plot and deception to lead us into this situation was far greater than meets the eye.

I think the greater part of this flood tragedy is the indifference and incompetence of the regime’s officials from top to bottom towards what has happened to millions of our innocent citizens as a result of decades of negligence.