On the occasion of Nowrouz, the Iranian New Year, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, delivered a message to the Iranian people.
Excerpts of the address are as follow:
Last year was truly one of advancement and pride for the Iranian people's Resistance on the one hand, and weakening and flagging for the mullahs' regime, on the other, which is indicative of the beginning of its implosion and ultimate overthrow.
NCRI – On the occasion of Nowrouz, the Iranian New Year, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, delivered a message to the Iranian people.
Excerpts of the address are as follow:
Last year was truly one of advancement and pride for the Iranian people's Resistance on the one hand, and weakening and flagging for the mullahs' regime, on the other, which is indicative of the beginning of its implosion and ultimate overthrow.
Last year witnessed an unrelenting cycle of protests and demonstrations across our enchained nation. These protests were exacerbated by those surrounding fuel rationing, and their flames engulfed the country’s neighborhoods, cities, universities and factories, where people chanted the slogans heard in Ashraf City: “We are the men and women of resistance. Fight and we will fight to the end,” ”We will stand, chant, and fight until the end,” “Even if bullets and hardships come our way, the movement will continue,” and “Freedom is our inalienable right.”
For the mullahs, last year ended as bitterly as it had begun, with UN Security Council resolutions 1747 and 1803. The mullahs tried their utmost, through an assortment of ploys, to prevent the passage of the resolutions, ranging from taking British sailors hostage to deceiving US intelligence agencies about their clandestine nuclear program. But, those plots failed. In reality, it was the Iranian Resistance, which did not allow the mullahs to achieve their ends.
The regime has become so vulnerable that Ali Larijani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council; Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi, Commander in Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, his Deputy and Deputy Interior Minister and many other senior and junior officials tendered their resignations.
And the mullahs' President, Ahmadinejad, was humiliated wherever he went, from Columbia University in New York to Tehran's Polytechnic University, to the streets of Baquba, Baghdad and Ramadi in Iraq. In a major defeat for Ahmadinejad during his trip to Iraq, the Iraqi people expressed their abhorrence toward the hidden occupation of Iraq by the Iranian regime. Many political figures and movements described this development as the most important development in the context of Iraq’s relations with the Iranian regime during the past five years. Today, whether in and out of Iran, Ahmadinejad is the most hated person in the eyes of everyone.
The mullahs' Majlis (Parliamentary) elections further matured the unipolarization trend and contraction of the regime’s ranks. Above all, the election was a resounding ‘NO’ by the Iranian nation to tyranny. This marked the ultimate defeat for the ruling despots. More than 95 percent of Iranians boycotted the charade. So pathetic was the election that according to official figures only 26 percent of those in Tehran voted. The candidate who came in first received only 11.5 percent of the votes and the one coming in last received six percent. The situation is similar in major cities such as Mashad and Tabriz. The highest number of votes cast in these cities for the winner was around 10 percent of the eligible voters.
It was later announced that the so-called "Principlist faction," which supports Ahmadinejad had obtained more than 70 percent of the votes.
The defeated factions, such as that of former mullahs’ president Mohammad Khatami, are truly pathetic. The maximum seats they were allowed to compete for numbered around 30, or less than 15 percent of the 290-seat Majlis.
In Tehran, which is a microcosm of the entire nation with 30 seats in the Majlis, 18 of the 19 candidates who made it in the first round were from Ahmadinejad's faction and the single remaining candidate belongs to Khamenei's camp, but a mild critic of the government. The situation will not get any better in the second round. The new Majlis in its entirety is one composed of henchmen and torturers. One of the deputies, Ruhollah Hosseinian, lauded the former deputy Intelligence Minister, who was implicated in the murder of more than 100 dissident writers and intellectuals in the 1990s, as a great martyr of the regime. Another deputy is Fatemah Alia, a woman who was personally involved in torturing many Mojahedin women in Evin Prison. Mullah Morteza Agha Tehrani is one of the ringleaders of plain-clothe agents and a mentor to the henchmen in Ahmadinejad's cabinet. The same is true in other cities.
One can better grasp the real status of the Majlis elections after considering the fact that the regime remained under pressure from six sides:
1. Internal defections, among the highest echelons of the regime and further contraction of the ruling clique;
2. Economic sanctions and the adoption of resolutions, in particular the Security Council resolutions;
3. The blacklisting of the Ministry of Defense and its affiliated organs, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the terrorist Qods Force, and most important banks of the regime as terrorists and nuclear proliferators.
4. Deadlock in Iraq, especially following the formation of the Awakening Councils, which entered the fray as the most important security and military factors;
5. The departure of a key regime ally in Europe, Jacque Chirac and the latest position by the European Union about the elections in Iran, describing it as "neither free nor fair;"
6. The status and advances made by the Iranian Resistance in and out of Iran through solidifying the third option, which considers the solution for the Iranian crisis is neither the continuation of appeasement nor a foreign war, but democratic change in Iran through the Iranian people and the Resistance.
Four years ago, during the Majlis elections at the end of 2003, the regime began to close its ranks. It had been emboldened from the windfall gains of the war in Iraq, especially the disarming of the National Liberation Army and the June 17, 2003 raid against NCRI headquarters in France.
The regime's unipolarity emerged through Ahmadinejad's appointment as president in July 2005 and was solidified in the recent Majlis elections.
Now, the question is: What does Khamenei need a Majlis comprised of henchmen and torturers for? And for what purpose has he, as his cohorts say, "engineered" the formation of such an assembly?
Is it because he wants to preserve the status quo? Or is he trying to devise a plan for further adventurism and war?
What Khamenei said in his message immediately after the election was that despite the "adoption of the Security Council resolution," "the election boycott," "portraying the country's management as gloomy," "frightening the public from the danger of an attack by the enemy," "the allegation of an unhealthy election," "the pretenses of popular disillusionment and apathy," a Majlis has been set up that is "committed, opposed to Western arrogance, and powerful."
In effect, what Khamenei is saying is that he is preparing to challenge all those models which are not compatible with religious fascism.
A day later, in his congratulatory message to the Supreme Leader, Ahmadinejad described the election as one which would "safeguard the right to enjoy the capacity to acquire nuclear energy with exemplary prowess." So, he had sought a parliament, which would follow, without bickering with the Supreme Leader and his minions on the path toward exiting the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and obtaining the nuclear bomb.
The situation was such that the European Union and the United States affirmed the illegitimacy of the elections and said that the elections "were neither free nor fair."
Of course, we welcome this change of position by the European Union and consider it as a turning point which has been imposed by the regime, especially since France, Germany and the US declared the elections as not being free, fair or legitimate.
May I say in passing that our only crime from the beginning of our political campaign after the 1979 revolution until today has been a demand for popular sovereignty as well as a democratic and fair election process.
Indeed, have the National Council of Resistance of Iran and its President, not said from June 20, 1981 until today that we want an election based on popular sovereignty and not based on the absolute rule of the clergy? In September 2003, on behalf of the Iranian Resistance, I called for a referendum on regime change based on the Iranian people's free vote. In a message to our compatriots in London in December 2004, I said, "The real yardstick and demarcation between terrorism and legitimate Resistance is whether one rejects or accepts elections and the plebiscite under the United Nations auspices or any other competent and impartial international agency. With this yardstick and definition, one can easily set aside ambiguous and wide-ranging interpretations and biased political labels and demarcate clearly between those who respect the people's vote and free elections and fight for freedom and popular sovereignty on the one hand, and those who, like the mullahs ruling Iran, refuse to hold free elections and plebiscite on the other. With that realistic yardstick, Iran's combatants of freedom can never be tainted with the brush of terrorism."
But in so far as the Iranian people and Resistance are concerned, last year was a year of advances and conquering of new heights. It can now be said that the greatest conspiracies to preserve the regime and destroy the Iranian people's Resistance were quashed.
This was achieved through,
1. The unsparing material and moral support of the Iranian people and our compatriots outside Iran, manifested for example in the major gathering of Iranians last summer in Paris;
2. The round-the-clock efforts of our brothers and sisters in Ashraf and in the unrelenting work of the NCRI, its members and supporters the world over;
3. The victories in courts, especially the annulment of the terrorist label in the UK;
4. The resolutions in the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and its Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in support of the judgment by the court in Luxembourg and in the United Kingdom;
5. The support of more than 1,500 European Parliamentarians and Parliamentary Committees for the Iranian Resistance and the third option for democratic change in Iran;
6. The realization by the international community about the nuclear and terrorist threats posed by the religious dictatorship being the main threat to global peace and security, as the Iranian Resistance had declared three decades ago;
7. The resolutions in the European Parliament and reports by the United Nations missions and the UN Secretary General's Special Rapporteurs concerning the legal status of the PMOI in Iraq, including the recent report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq about the status of PMOI members as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention and a reiteration of the principle of non-refoulement, which forms the pillar of refugee laws;
8. The great solidarity congress in Ashraf and the declaration by 450,000 Iraqis in the Diyala Province in Iraq;
9. The support of 3,000 tribal sheikhs;
10. The support of 300,000 Shiites in southern Iraq and a major political movement of Shiite Ulemas in defense of Ashraf;
11. The unsparing support of all democratic parties and nationalist currents, groups and personalities, whether Shiite, Sunni or Kurd and Turkmen in Iraq, to the point where except for the regime's operatives and allies, most Iraqis and nationalist forces consider the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance as their strategic ally in support for peace, security and freedom.
The Iranian Resistance is the force for change. By relying on its social base and its unremitting struggle, it is advancing and on the offensive. It will bring freedom to Iran.
The mullahs' regime has reached the end of the line. Appeasement and concessions are doubly counterproductive and futile. In its non-stop activities in the New Year, the regime will pass through fragile milestones which will transform its policies to the detriment of the regime in its entirety.
