The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK) announced on Wednesday that COVID-19 has so far taken the lives of over 78,800 people in Iran. The rising death toll in Iran is mostly because of the regime’s initial cover-up of this crisis.
When the virus started, the Iranian regime, as usual started a deception campaign. The regime’s officials denied the existence of virus in Iran, while dozens were infected or had lost their lives. The mullahs were about to hold their sham parliamentary elections. They were dreaming of having a large turnout in this so-called election to somehow legitimize their rule, particularly after killing over 1500 people during the nationwide Iran protests, shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet, losing their top terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, and the regime’s increasing international isolation.
But is the regime’s deception a sign of its strength? Indeed, not. The regime’s handling of shooting down the Ukrainian passenger jet confirms this. When the Revolutionary Guards downed the airliner, all the regime’s top officials were immediately informed. But fearing that announcing this action would bring them more international isolation and might trigger new rounds of protests, the regime’s officials denied shooting down the airline for three consecutive days. Their fear, however, was well-founded. When the regime’s officials acknowledged they had downed the airliner in January, Iranians across Iran poured onto the streets and soon targeted the regime’s top officials in their slogans. The regime had to arrests hundreds and attack peaceful protesters to prevent this uprising from spreading and continuing.
Now the regime fears to tell the truth about the novel coronavirus and the extent of this crisis because this will certainly result in a new series of protests. The regime also fears more international pressure, therefore it desperately tries to hide its nuclear activities to secretly obtain a nuclear bomb and prolong its life.
Now, it is important that the international community side with the risen people of Iran and their organized resistance movement.
In this regard, the NCRI virtually held the “Free Iran Global Summit,” connecting 30,000 locations in over 100 countries. This event which was attended by renowned politicians from different countries manifested a strong international coalition against the regime and in support of the Iranian people.
One of the participants of this event was former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper.
Below is the full text of Mr. Stephen Harper’s speech.
All governments and people may be united in the fight against coronavirus, but in Iran, the regime and the virus are united against the people. We will never know the real number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the mullahs’ regime. But what we do know is that no country was so quickly overwhelmed by the cases and so unable to genuinely help its people. And it was unable because it is unwilling. The regime’s priorities remain not the health and welfare of its citizens but the spread of its ideological hatred, the backing of its regional terror network, and of course the furthering of its apocalyptic nuclear program. What greater proof can there be of the regime’s evil and unreformable nature than its fanatical adherence to nuclear weapons ambitions during a pandemic devastating its population. But that’s what has happened.
The Ayatollah’s regime has breached almost all of its commitments under the JCPOA nuclear deal, continue to accumulate low enriched uranium, continuing its work on nuclear missile delivery systems, and continuing to keep its nuclear facilities operating and continuing to refuse to grant access to inspectors, no doubt to cover up the true scale of its deception.
But deception is no substitute for strength. And the regime is not strong; it is weakened. Today its allies from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq and Yemen and Gaza are experiencing enormous economic pain and popular unrest. And of course, with the economic situation deteriorating at home, corruption rampant with explosions and fires widely reported, street protests continue to break out in Iran itself. They do so despite the real risk of death for the protestors and despite the disinformation campaigns that the regime wages against its opponents, including most frequently against this organization.
Still, the regime has never looked weaker than at the very moments when it has tried to show strength. Yes, it was able to shoot down a defenseless commercial airliner, killing 63 of my fellow Canadian citizens and many others in the process. But its attempt to hit back at those who can defend themselves, at America and Israeli and Saudi assets, those have been brushed away like annoying insects, with its supposedly all-powerful terror leader Soleimani eliminated in the blink of an eye. The regime is ready to fall and the regime is ready to be replaced.
This organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran has adopted a 10-point plan including democracy and free elections, pluralism and human rights, justice and the rule of law, peaceful coexistence and gender equality, private property and a market economy, the separation of religion and state, and of course, a non-nuclear Iran. Friends, I’ve never claimed to be able to tell the Iranian people who their government should be, only that it is the Iranian people themselves who have the right to choose it. But surely this 10-point plan is what all people of good faith wish to see in a reformed and reborn Iranian nation. So, I say stand with Maryam Rajavi and with all those people and organizations around the world who seek a free, democratic, and peaceful future for Iran and its people. Friends, continue your struggle, keep hope alive, and prepare for the new Iran that will come to pass through your efforts. And thank you for allowing me to be part once again of this great event. Good health and blessings to all of you. Hazer, hazer, hazer.
