On Thursday, a delegation of Italian lawmakers visited Ashraf 3 in Albania, which is the home to members of Iran’s principal opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and also met with Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). This delegation was headed by Senator Giulio Terzi, a renowned Italian lawmaker and former Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his remarks addressing the MEK members in Ashraf 3, Mr. Terzi addressed the current situation in Iran, underling that the country should “be reborn from the ashes of infamous ignominy that the actual regime of the Ayatollahs.”
He also referred to the wide support the Iranian Resistance enjoys in different parliaments in the United States and Europe. Mr. Terzi particularly mentioned the recent House Resolution 100, supported by over 200 American lawmakers from both political parties, which emphasizes utter support of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi’s ten-point plan for the future of Iran. “All this great movement which is existing in the world in support and promotion of the Iranian resistance represented by the PMOI/MEK, and the National Council of Resistance of Iran,” Senator Terzi said in this regard.
Senator Terzi said that “The reason why we are here today is to bring to all of you in person in person, in a written way, the sense of our unwavering support and commitment, of our friendship and admiration.”
While supporting the nationwide uprising against the ruling theocracy, Senator Terzi praised the role of the Iranian Resistance to show “the extent of the uprising, and the enormous courage of those who are attacking or demonstrating or showing on which side of history they are staying in Iran and in the world, in defending their cause and defending your cause.”
He also added that “the current protests are rooted in more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship, a resistance which for years has been led by women, by men, by young people who have endured torture, sexual, gender-based violence, and death.”
While denouncing the appeasement policy of the Western governments toward the regime, Senator Terzi emphasized how, adopting this policy, the European Union “Is failing in security policy vis-a-vis Iran,” urging it to “change its foreign security policy on Iran.” He added that the regime is “a genocidal threat against everyone’s life in Iran and outside Iran. But Iran is a global threat. It’s a terrible global threat that now is engaged in a war, in a war against the resistance, but it is a war against Europe.”
Senator Terzi also condemned Tehran’s role in helping Russia in its war of aggression in Ukraine.
“Iran is a global threat. The nuclear program is running free hands. It is completely out of control because of that false belief, that dream, that a JCPOA agreement, that nuclear agreement could have ever been negotiated with a criminal regime. You cannot negotiate anything with criminals. They just must be countered and opposed and dislodged by force,” he added.
Senator Terzi, who was Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, underlined that the regime’s diplomacy goes hand-in-hand with terrorism while referring to the case of Assadollah Assadi-Tehran’s diplomat-terrorist arrested in 2018 for attempting to bomb the NCRI’s rally in France in 2018- as a testament to this fact.
“What is the Iranian foreign policy? Who are the diplomatic agents of Iran? They are terrorists! Can I speak for just a second about the case of Assadi, a diplomat and secretary? The secretary is already an important rank. It’s a full-fledged diplomat in the diplomatic area of the Iranian embassy in Vienna. And he tried to bring a huge bomb in Villepinte five years ago, trying to create probably the biggest terrorist attack comparable only to the Twin Towers in New York.”
Senator Terzi also praised the Iranian Resistance’s efforts in hindering a prisoner-swap deal between the Iranian regime and Belgium, which could result in Assadi’s release.
“The National Council of Resistance of Iran was able to rise all across Europe and was able to bring and to keep that criminal, the terrible criminal terrorist diplomat, in jail. And that shows that another proposal on which Madam Rajavi is insisting, and the organization is very much on the agenda, the fact that the terrorist diplomatic network in Europe must be dismantled, must be dismantled without compromise. No compromise is possible there,” he added in this regard.
Senator Terzi also rejected the inapt notion of the return of the deposed monarchy, which has been marketed by Reza Pahlavi, Shah’s son. Reza Pahlavi and his ilk-which consists of former state-affiliated reporters and celebrities- have constantly been trying to twist the truth and claim Iranians want the return of the Pahlavi dictatorship they once ousted in 1979.
“We cannot be fooled by prompt conversion to the idea of freedom by a party that was a party of a dictatorship 50 years ago, which used the same procedures, the same tortures, the same chambers, the same hanging that the regime does and that was involved in the same kind of repression of whatever position that existed,” Senator Terzi said in this regard.
“The people who believe that the monarchy of the shah is still something that is viable and that could be accepted and decently presented as an option to the Iranian people and to the international community. That is something that must disappear from the political discourse. The sooner, the better,” Senator Terzi concluded.
