Former Iranian fighter pilot: 'Ahmadinejad incites war' - 'Iranian military officers won't support Ahmadinejad'

 Lieutenant Behzad Masoumi Legwan

In Channel 10 interview, Bahazad Masawi says Iranian regime is "world's biggest terrorism supporter"; says Iran and Israel not enemies.

Iran has a nuclear military plan and intends to acquire atomic weapons, a former Iranian air force lieutenant said in an interview broadcast on Channel 10 news Tuesday night.

Bahazad Masawi, a former fighter pilot who defected from Iran and is in hiding in Paris, said: “Ahmadinejad creates terror and incites war in the area. This is not good for the Iranian people. Ahmadinejad makes the situation in Iran and in the entire region worse.”

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The former pilot, who flew Iran’s F-14 fighter jets, stressed that Israel is not an enemy of Iran.

“The Iranian nation is not an enemy of the Israeli people and in the past they were not enemies either; they had always been friends,” he said. “It is not possible to separate the Iranian people from the people of Israel. King Cyrus is the one who saved the Jews.”

Masawi expressed regret in the interview for Iran’s support for Hizbullah and other terrorist organizations.

“All of the state’s money finances terrorism; the Islamic regime in Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world. Everyone knows this,” he added.

Speaking on his role as a pilot in Iran’s air force, Masawi said, “We had no access to the fighting techniques of the Israeli Air Force; it belongs to Iranian intelligence. They are the ones who are involved in this issue. We had no need to spy on anyone; our job was to fly.”

Masawi fled to Paris a few days ago, he told Channel 10, through a network of military officers who oppose the Islamic regime.

Speaking about the regime, the pilot said, “One young man comes out and speaks against the Iranian regime, shouting in the streets, ‘Death to the dictatorship,’ and then they arrest him, rape him, imprison him and then kill him.

“This is called a dictatorial regime. This is not a just regime.”

IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi will tell the top American officials he is to meet with Wednesday in Washington that tougher sanctions can succeed in stopping Iran’s enrichment of uranium.

Ashkenazi on Tuesday wrapped up a three-day visit to Canada, which included meetings with the top defense leadership and his Canadian counterpart Gen. Walt Natynczyk.

A senior officer traveling with Ashkenazi said that the chief of staff planned to present Israeli assessments on Iran’s nuclear program during his meetings with chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen.

Ashkenazi is perceived in Washington as serving a restraining role in the Israeli defense and political establishments.

He is attributed with holding back from escalating Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in early 2009 and has voiced moderate views on Iran in the past.

Ashkenazi said several weeks ago that the latest round of sanctions imposed on Iran was having an effect on the regime but that additional sanctions pertaining to the energy sector and banking system were required to further pressure Iran into changing its current course of action.

Israeli intelligence assessments conclude that Iran will continue to enrich uranium at low levels, as it is currently doing, and then – when it believes the price it will pay internationally will be low – it will go to the breakout stage and begin enriching to higher levels required for a nuclear weapon.

During his meetings with Mullen as well as with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, Ashkenazi is also expected to discuss Israeli concerns with the current military buildup in the region, recently highlighted by US plans to sell $60 billion worth of advanced military equipment to Saudi Arabia, including 84 F-15 fighter jets and JDAM smart bombs.

The IDF is primarily concerned with the sale of the JDAMs to the Saudis.

Dissident commander tells Paris crowd regime change must be internal process.

PARIS – Most Iranian military officers are not loyal to the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and would not fight to protect the Islamic Republic, a former Iranian pilot who defected to France said on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Paris, Lieutenant Behzad Masoumi Legwan gave a speech saying: “It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of the officer corps are in no way obedient followers of the regime. On the contrary, they are looking for the first opportunity whereby they can openly display their true sentiments by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Iran.”
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Legwan added, “I and a significant segment of personnel and senior officers in the armed forces are in opposition to the Islamic Republic, and will never alter direction until such time that our nation has been liberated.”

The 39-year-old Legwan arrived in Paris earlier this month, over a year after he fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in September 2009. In Kurdistan, he made contact with representatives of the Green Wave Movement for Freedom of Iran and the Kurdish Democratic Party, who arranged for him to arrive safely in France.

Legwan was given refugee status by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, which also provided him with the necessary travel documents to make it to his new home.

Months later, he was joined in Paris by his wife, who was also given assistance by the French government.

Legwan and his wife have no children back in Iran, though the pilot did confirm that he still has many relatives in the country, whom he has not spoken to but who he assumes are in danger.

Green Wave activist Hortense Harang said that Legwan and his wife are living under tight, round-the-clock security in Paris, though she would not comment on what, if any, role the French government plays in providing security for him.

During the press conference, the pilot related a harrowing story of repeated torture at the hands of Iranian security forces interrogators, who called him in for questioning on a number of occasions that began when he was accused of rebellion and sedition in 2001.

Before and following his eventual discharge in 2007, Legwan said he maintained contact with a network of dissenting military officers, who helped prepare him for his defection.

Though he had no clear figures on how large the network of dissident officers in Iran is, or how many support the cause, Legwan said through an interpreter that “for every official defector who makes it out, there are hundreds more back in Iran who feel the same and need our support.”

Legwan was joined on the podium by former consul of Iran in Oslo and executive director of Iranian Green Embassies Campaign Mohammed Reza Heydari, who defected to Norway in January 2010. Alongside the two dissidents was Amir Hossein Jahanchahi, the founding chairman of the Green Wave.

Jahanchahi minced no words in describing the global danger posed by the Iranian regime, whose president he likened to Hitler: “Iran is the root of all the problems in the region. All the conflicts in the region, including the Israel-Palestine conflict, Lebanese internal strife, and the Afghan and Iraqi wars all lead back to Iran.”

He added that Israel is in a lose-lose situation in regard to the Iranian nuclear program, saying “if Israel does not attack, there will be war; but if Israel does attack, it would be the biggest gift the Ahmadinejad regime could ever receive and would send the entire region into war.”

Jahanchahi accused the leaders of the West, in particular US President Barack Obama, of not understanding the severity of the situation in Iran, or the danger it poses to the entire world.

He added that the West “has no idea how many “Iranian agents are operating even just in Paris alone, and they aren’t necessarily Iranian or Shi’ite.”

Jahanchahi also said Western leaders are not doing enough to help the people of Iran bring about regime change, before adding that such change will and must be brought about internally by the Iranian people.