The following is the text of speech by Mr. Stevenson on April 24, 2008 at the seminar in Strasbourg entitled “European Unions relations with Iran: Prospects for a democratic change” organized by the President of the French Regional Council of Alsace, Mr. Adrien Zeller and Dr. Alejo Vidal Quadras, Vice-President of the European Parliament as well as the French Committee for a Democratic Iran and the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup in the European Parliament:
NCRI- Mr. Struan Stevenson, Vice-President of the EPP-ED group at the European Parliament and Co-chair of the Friends of a Free Iran (FOFI) Intergroup at the EP, in a speech called on European countries to remove the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) from terror list and support it as the only possibility of establishing democracy in Iran.
The following is the text of a speech by Mr. Stevenson on April 24, 2008 at the seminar in Strasbourg entitled “European Unions relations with Iran: Prospects for a democratic change” organized by the President of the French Regional Council of Alsace, Mr. Adrien Zeller and Dr. Alejo Vidal Quadras, Vice-President of the European Parliament as well as the French Committee for a Democratic Iran and the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup in the European Parliament:
Mr. Struan Stevenson, Vice-President of the EPP-ED group at the European Parliament and joint Chair of the Friends of a Free Iran (FOFI) Intergroup at the EP
Seminar on “European Unions relations with Iran: Prospects for a democratic change”
Strasbourg, April 24, 2008
We set up the Friends of a Free Iran Inter-group at the European Parliament four years ago with the purpose of backing the restoration of democracy, rule of law, human rights, women's rights, the abolition of the death penalty and the abolition of nuclear weapons in Iran. We quickly discovered that the main opposition organization backing exactly those objectives with a manifesto which I would be proud to stand for election under was the PMOI and we have backed the PMOI ever since to realize those objectives. We have fought a campaign to have the PMOI removed from the EU, the UK and the US terror lists where they have been unjustly placed on bogus trumped up charges mostly at the behest of the mullahs' regime in Tehran.
We have travelled widely throughout Europe to the UK and to many other countries in pursuit of our objective of having the PMOI taken off the terror list. We have been to the United States on many occasions, to the Congress and the Senate, putting the arguments there.
Paulo Casaca (Co-chair of the FOFI) and other colleagues have on several occasions travelled to Iraq to visit Camp Ashraf where 3.5 thousand of the key frontline members of the PMOI are refugees under the fragile security. I should say to you that these are brave and courageous people.
Paulo and I have met many obstacles on several occasions when we sought to invite Mrs. Rajavi to come to the European Parliament. Most recently when we invited Mrs. Rajavi to come and speak to the EPP-ED group which I am a Vice-President of, in Strasbourg, we had phone calls from Tehran where Javier Solana, was at that point meeting with the mullahs to try to persuade them to give up their nuclear enrichment program, he was on the telephone to Angela Merkel, and we then had the intervention of Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel of Austria and leaders from around of the EU telling our democratically elected MEPs that we should not meet with Mrs. Rajavi. This was unbelievable, the pressure was intense but we said we are freely elected democratic politicians and we will decide who we meet, we will not be told who we meet by Tehran, and we had a very successful meeting with Mrs. Rajavi.
We have had campaigns of vilification in the media waged against us by the Iranian intelligence with spurious press articles, calling Paulo Casaca and myself and others who support the PMOI as friends of terrorists. Paulo has had particularly a campaign waged against him in his own national newspapers in Portugal. I have had similar press in the UK. You find on the websites that are listed in these spurious advertisements you find telephone numbers and email addresses which are blank when you try to contact them. These are all placed and funded by the Iranian Intelligence. They are afraid of the PMOI, they recognize that it is the key opposition movement, they know it is the only threat to their stranglehold that they have on Iran. That is why they become hysterical when they hear meetings like this is taking place, when hear that democratic politicians in Europe are meeting with Mrs. Rajavi and listening to her message.
While we have pursued the policy of appeasement, while we have pursued the indecision that division which characterized our policy in Europe this has offered a golden opportunity for Ahmadinejad to continue with his brutal oppression. To continue with even more executions, with more amputations, stonings, even most recently now a new innovation where they execute people by throwing them off cliffs. This is the horror of the Iranian regime.
As Mrs. Rajavi told us, we have Ahmadinejad boasting that he has 6,000 centrifuges ready to work and cascade on his nuclear enrichment program. Of course we are told in the West that this is a perfectly straight forward peaceful nuclear program to produce electricity. Where then is the nuclear power station? There is one existing nuclear power station at Bushehr. There is no other nuclear power station being built, the Russians have a contract to supply all the fuel to Bushehr, where is the new nuclear power station? Why are we so stupid about this? Why do we even begin to believe this message that it could possibly be a non-threatening nuclear program?
But it is part of our policy of appeasement. We have heard from the PMOI, from their courageous supporters within Iran, who were the first to tell the West, to tell our intelligence agencies in Europe and the US of the existence of the nuclear program. They were the ones who risked their lives and sometimes lost their lives bringing this information to the West. They were the ones who recently told us of the secret nuclear control and command center in Lavizan where they are working on a nuclear generator and triggers for an atomic bomb. They were the ones who recently told us that the nuclear warheads are being produced at the Khojir site, southeast of Tehran. They brought the information to us telling us the names of the scientists working on these projects and exact locations of the sites, the exact technology involved. They have given all these information to us in the West and yet all we do is to raise our pretence of backing the UN sanctions.
This is all completely bogus. The information that was recently given to me from Trans Atlantic Institute showed major European companies working with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps within Iran. I had asked the PMOI to get their people, again at the risk of their own lives, to check this information inside Iran and to find out if European companies really are breaking sanctions. Last week they delivered to me the answer; a major German company is supplying tunneling equipment mass of tunneling machinery of huge sophistication without which the nuclear bunkers could not be built for the nuclear program in Iran. You can see in some of these pictures even the IRGC signs above the tunnels. The IRGC is on the US terror list together with the Qods Force. We have German companies supplying tunneling equipments and sending teams of experts over to Iran to train the Iranians how these equipments works and then selling these machineries to them in order for them to continue with their nuclear program and build the bunkers that are necessary.
There are major Italian companies supplying dual use equipment. Both of these corporations are working with the IRGC's Khatam military engineering complex which is on the UN's sanctions list. Both of these companies from Germany and Italy are breaking sanctions.
On Sunday, the Observer newspaper in the UK even named a British businessman from London who was supplying missile guidance systems to the Iranian regime.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We talk about the policy of appeasement, we talk about the threat that Iran may pose if nuclear weapons become available to it and we have heard that Ahmadinejad repeatedly saying that he wishes to wipe Israel off the map. Why then do we follow the policy of appeasement with a regime which is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism anywhere in the world? Virtually every major terrorist outrage in the last decade has the finger print of the mullahs on it. Why do we appease them? Why have we not severed our diplomatic relations with them? Why do we allow our ambassadors to cozy up to these former torturers and brutal oppressors in Tehran? Why do we allow their odious ambassadors to mingle amongst us in our parliaments here in Europe? The US has placed the IRGC on their terror list and the Qods Force. Why have we not done so in the EU? Well I can tell you the answer in one word, MONEY!
There are too many vested interests in Europe filling their pockets with great contracts with Iran and they wish to keep it going even to the point of supplying Iran with the technology it needs to build its nuclear weapons which will then threaten the stability of the world. This is an outrage and the only people who are prepared to stand up and expose that outrage are the PMOI and what do we do? At the direct request of the mullahs we placed the PMOI on the UK terror list, on the EU terror list and effectively gag them, tie their hands, freeze all their assets and stop them lobbying in the corridors of power where they could bring effective opposition to bear on this tittering regime in Tehran.
This is a regime which is tittering on the brink of extinction but it needs a shove, it needs a push to topple it and that push can only come from the main opposition party and from the inspired leadership of Mrs. Rajavi. So I say to the French presidency when Mr. Sarkozy takes over on the first of July, we respect that he had taken a tough resolve against the nuclear program in Iran, but we say to him it is no use talking tough unless you can back it up with action and the way to send them the most profound signal that we mean business to the mullahs is to take the PMOI off the EU terror list and start backing them as the only possibility of restoring democracy to that beleaguered nation.
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Editor’s note: The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, MEK) is a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.