Speech in the international conference – Paris
Distinguished Guests,
It is a pleasure to meet each and every one of you.
This conference is being held at an extraordinary moment in the history of the Middle East and North Africa.
People have risen up from Tunisia, Cairo and Benghazi to Tehran.
Tripoli is advancing towards liberation through the sacrifice of hundreds of its youths.
Flares are igniting in Baghdad through the ruins of war, treachery and appeasement.
And in Tehran, the bravery of Iran’s young generation has checkmated the ogre of repression.
I salute all those who have arisen for democracy and freedom.
Let us pay homage to all of them, especially those heroes who lost their lives during the Feb. 14 and Feb. 20 uprisings in Iran, Saneh Jaleh, Mohammad Mokhtari and Hamed Nour-Mohammadi, by standing up and applauding them for one minute.
Dear Friends,
The tide of freedom has engulfed the entire region.
No country will be spared from this tide.
We must now ask ourselves why these uprisings have taken such an explosive character.
What factors had until now delayed their eruption?
What has been the course of Western policy towards these countries?
And what are the prospects and our responsibilities?
The reality is that:
– Peoples of these countries have always suffered under dictatorship, poverty and corruption;
– Their fundamental rights, legitimate demands and democratic ideals have been trampled upon in the worst possible manner;
– Dictators have ruled these countries for decades, mostly posturing as Presidents of the Republic while lacking the popular vote;
– They have pillaged or destroyed the wealth and resources of these countries.
To offer a precise assessment of what is happening in the region, allow me to back track a bit.
In 1979, a revolution took place in Iran with profoundly democratic ideals.
Why did this revolution, instead of serving as an inspiration for democracy throughout the rest of the region, lead to the creation of the epicenter for exporting terrorism and fundamentalism?
The answer is because Khomeini stole its leadership;
Because by killing genuine pro-democracy forces of the revolution, he established a religious dictatorship and in this way took the democratic trends in the region hostage.
By setting the stage and insisting on the perpetuation of the eight-year war with Iraq and by exporting terrorism, the regime in Tehran became the principal threat to the region.
How did this threat materialize?
In all these years, the clerical regime has been waiting in the wings to exploit the tension and the vacuum caused by the transition from dictatorship to democracy to create proxy movements and even install its client governments in these countries.
Amid all this, the United States and Europe established their policy toward the Iranian regime and fundamentalism on appeasement. Why?
One reason was the prevalence of a misunderstanding about the nature of fundamentalism.
Another concerned economic and tactical interests and considerations.
Western countries have in practice provided the greatest help to the regime in expanding its sphere of influence in the region.
At the same time, they supported dictators in the region, perceiving it as a way to stop the expansion of fundamentalism.
This situation gave dictatorships an aura of legitimacy in the region, since it was thought that their downfall, or even serious reforms in their regimes, would lead to the domination of fundamentalism and more dangerous dictatorships.
In short, two factors prolonged the reign of dictatorships in the region.
First, the presence of the Iranian regime as the godfather of fundamentalism, and second, the gravely mistaken policy of the United States and Europe.
In the absence of these two factors, dictatorships in the region would have been overthrown many years ago enabling democratic trends to take their natural course of evolution.
That is precisely why attempts to overthrow them today have been imbued with an explosive character.
At the same time, with the rising tide of freedom across the region, the clerical regime in Iran is once again waiting in the wings.
The regime’s Supreme Leader for life is trying to realize his evil designs under the banner of “Islamic awakening.”
In view of that, are we facing a vicious cycle? By no means.
There is a possible and necessary way out: the unseating of the mullahs’ inhumane regime and the establishment of democracy in Iran.
Indeed, the era of fundamentalism and darkness has come to an end. The age of democracy and freedom is upon us.
Dear Friends,
We know that the West, instead of being decisive against the mullahs’ regime, the epicenter of fundamentalism, in effect kneeled before it.
At the same, it either turned upside down or completely slaughtered the most important values and achievements obtained by humankind, including human rights, democracy, resistance, justice and law.
Human rights were overshadowed by something viewed as realism and sacrificed in favor of trade and diplomacy.
It was claimed that democracy ran counter to the culture and religion of people in the Middle East, as if these nations were condemned be under dictatorship from time immemorial to eternity.
Resistance in pursuit of freedom was denigrated, and then the largest anti-fundamentalist and anti-terrorist movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), was placed on terrorist lists.
Justice and the rule of law were trampled upon even in western countries, because doling out concessions to the mullahs was deemed more important.
The mullahs’ acts of terrorism and murder, spanning from Beirut to Khobar to Baghdad, were ignored, lest it would cast a shadow over the “sacred” ritual of negotiations.
The meaning of moderation became so distorted that a faction of Iran’s ruling religious fascism was praised for putting on a moderate façade.
This was how western policy blocked the path to change in Iran. Instead, it granted the regime opportunities to make inroads in the region.
Look at Lebanon, Palestine and before all to Iraq. The policy of appeasement enabled the mullahs to bring a government of their liking to power in that country, a government that faced people’s rage as recently as yesterday.
This policy, the greatest policy blunder by the West since the Second World War, is no longer tenable, because, its main subject, the Iranian regime, is on the brink.
Here too, the West was mistaken in thinking that the Iranian situation will revert to what it was prior to the 2009 uprisings.
We see that quite the opposite has happened as uprisings in Iran have spread and are moving forward.
On February 14 and 20, protesters courageously took to the streets, with their bravery impressing the entire world.
Everyone saw that in their demands and slogans, the protestors are not calling simply for changes in the regime’s policies. Rather, their demand is that the regime in its entirety must be changed.
Indeed, the survival of a regime through the suppression of freedoms is no longer possible.
As the Iranian Resistance’s Leader, Massoud Rajavi, said recently, “The velayat-e faqih regime [absolute clerical rule] has tried its utmost over the past 32 years to fill the vast historical gap between the twentieth and twenty-first century with its medieval regime and its gallows, firing squads, war, crises and export of terrorism. Even after all that, this regime cannot buy itself stability.”
Indeed, the mullahs’ era is over. The era of the Iranian people and freedom has begun.
Dear Friends,
There is no other criterion of the West’s appeasement policy toward Iran more telling than the designation of the PMOI.
It is through this label that the people of Iran and the Middle East discover the real policy of the United States and Europe.
By looking at this label, they realize where the West is standing: with the clerical regime or with the Iranian people?
After years of relentless campaigning by the Resistance, Europe was forced to remove the PMOI from its list. And now it is America’s turn.
By taking advantage of this very label, the mullahs have tightened a three-year siege on Camp Ashraf.
Fearing the role of Ashraf in inspiring Iran’s women and youth in recent months, they have repeatedly attacked it.
Since a year ago, the clerical regime has installed loudspeakers around Ashraf as part of a revolting psychological warfare against its residents.
In the absence of an effective international response, the number of loudspeakers has now risen to 210.
The mullahs are even preventing the inflow of many types of medicine to Ashraf.
They are advancing a policy of tormenting and gradually murdering patients in Ashraf.
In recent days, they have also tried to increase the number of repressive forces inside Ashraf.
The European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, as well as parliaments and senates in 30 countries, including the US House of Representatives, have issued declarations and resolutions in which they have emphasized the status of the residents of Ashraf as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention and urged the resumption of their protection by the United States and the stationing of a permanent UNAMI team at Ashraf.
As such, Ashraf is a litmus test for the United States and the United Nations. I call on them to uphold their commitments.
Indeed, the age of silence and appeasement has to come to an end.
Now is the time for democracy and freedom to march forward.
Dear Friends,
We are approaching this year’s International Women’s Day at a time when women in the Middle East have sacrificed a great deal in their struggle against dictatorship, taking the campaign to attain freedom and equality to its zenith.
The blossoming of these movements revives the most vital, yet marginalized, needs of our societies: Women’s equality, human rights, freedom and democracy.
The experience of Iran under the rule of fundamentalists has shown that women are the main targets of suppression.
As a result, they harbor an enormous energy to struggle, rendering them the force for change.
It is on this basis that we say that among the many factors which have made the dawn of freedom in Iran inevitable, the most decisive is women’s penetrating capacity for change.
Recognition of this fact is made possible by a quick glance at the history of the struggle of Iranian women against two dictatorships.
In the past three decades, Iranian society has relied on women’s unremitting struggle to persevere against religious fascism.
During this time, tens of thousands of courageous women have been either tortured or killed in the struggle against the ruling regime.
Homeira Eshraq, and many others like her, were killed under torture. Tahereh Tolou’s heart was pierced with a dagger by the Revolutionary Guards who then hanged her head first from a cliff.
Shirin Alamhoui and Zahra Bahrami were hanged in Tehran recently.
And Neda Aqa Soltan, the symbol of the 2009 protests, died in Tehran’s streets with open eyes.
At the same time, 1,000 brave women have been leading Camp Ashraf, the focal point of hope for an enchained nation, amid the most torturous of circumstances.
Based on the invaluable experiences of the Iranian Resistance, the active participation of women in leadership is indispensible to a multi-faceted struggle against religious fundamentalism and dictatorship.
The definitive defeat of fundamentalism is possible, but at the hands of these women. It is they who will change the world.
I call on all my sisters across the globe to rise up in defense of the flames of resistance that are burning in Ashraf and in the four corners of Iran.
Dear Friends,
Allow me to summarize my remarks:
1. The path to a peaceful and democratic Middle East, where women and youth could play their rightful role, inevitably passes through regime change in Iran.
Without this change, democracy and stability would not be real possibilities for the region. In the current circumstance, regime change in Iran is a hundred times more necessary. Otherwise, developments in the region will be diverted.
2. The solution for the Iranian crisis is neither appeasement nor war. Our option for Iran is one which would benefit the entire region: democratic change by the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance.
3. Our message to our sisters and brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and to our neighbors and brother nations of Afghanistan and Iraq is “Beware of the fundamentalist mullahs, the murderers of Iran’s women and youth.”
Your struggle will come to fruition in virtue of your sacrifices and suffering on the condition that you safeguard it from this sinister threat.
4. If Western countries are interested in playing a positive role in the new age in the Middle East, they must change their policy as the first and inevitable step; a change from reaching out to the religious fascism to reaching out to the Iranian people.
5. The most important step for the West to abandon a policy that has been to the detriment of the Iranian people and the whole region is the recognition of the Iranian people’s resistance movement.
6. International sanctions against the regime, although a positive step, have in no way been sufficient. We offer several imperative measures: a ban on buying oil from the regime in Iran; referral of the mullahs’ human rights abuses dossier to the UN Security Council; cutting contacts between western intelligence services and the mullahs’ Ministry of Intelligence; and shutting down front companies for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Europe, Canada and the US.
7. The alternative which the Iranian Resistance represents has challenged the mullahs by presenting a democratic platform:
A republic based on the separation of church and state, a pluralist democracy, a society based on gender equality and respect for human rights, where death penalty and the mullahs’ Sharia laws will be abolished, a vibrant economy based on equal opportunity for all, and a non-nuclear Iran that is at peace with all its neighbors.
Yes, the era of defeated revolutions has come to an end.
The age of democracy and freedom for the people of Iran and the region has arrived.
Thank you all very much.
26 Feb, 2011