An Iranian Diplomat Agrees with Me but not with Thomas Friedman

By Phyllis Chesler

The Evil Kingdom of Mullahs have both exiled and murdered Afghan refugees in flight from the Taliban.

In 2021, together with London based activist, Mandy Sanghera, I was privileged to co-lead a grassroots team who rescued 398 Afghan women.  Since I was once held captive in Kabul (read about it in my book An American Bride in Kabul), the opportunity to rescue other women in a far worse situation was redemptive for me. Our allies were Christians, Orthodox Jews, former military officers, and radical feminists. At some point, the world’s borders became closed to Afghans in flight from persecution and death at the hands of the Taliban.

A self-described “rescuer” in Spain, (I will call her B), did get a number of our women and their families out and into remote rural areas of Spain where they were funded for only one year. After that, they were informed that it was time for them to take care of themselves. But, long before that happened, this woman promised that if we could get some of the remaining Afghan women out to a third country e.g. Pakistan or Iran, she would bring them to Spain.

Well, she lied. Or rather, she overreached. She was yet one more person who wanted to be lauded and funded for her altruism–oh, there are so many. She wanted publicity first in order to first get funded, and when that did not happen–our Afghan women, almost penniless, sometimes without male protectors, some with brothers and children, remained stuck in Teheran, Meshad, or Isfahan. They kept begging for help–and then they stopped, they became quiet.

I wondered if they had gone back to horrendous lives under the Taliban or whether they’d managed to marry an Iranian. Now, I must wonder whether they were among those whom Iran forcibly exiled or worse, whether any of them were among the hundreds of Afghan refugees whom Iran executed over the last year.

Muslim on Muslim hatred, Shiia on Sunni hatred. The Iranian oil fields, their nuclear sites, their torture chambers–all, all protected by American foreign policy. The same America that pulled out of Afghanistan in an unbelievably incompetent way, leaving billions of dollars of military equipment behind for the Taliban–and, more important, leaving human beings many of whom had become Westernized, some of whom had worked with American and European organizations–at the mercy of Hell.

First published at the Phyllis Chesler Organization