Maryam Rajavi: A democratic, non-nuclear Iran with the overthrow of the religious dictatorship

A democratic, non-nuclear Iran with the overthrow of the religious dictatorship

In the name of God,
In the name of Iran,
In the name of Freedom,
In the name of 120,000 shining stars, the blazing flames of honor and dignity who defied the religious tyranny, and
In the name of all the unsung heroes and heroines who made the ultimate sacrifice so that others could live free; so that in the darkest hour of her history, Iran can still shine with glowing stars, while standing proud and demanding: “Down with the velayat-e faqih regime!”

The Voice and Message of the Rightful Owners of Iran

Elected representatives of nations around the globe,
Honorable dignitaries,
My fellow compatriots, here and all over Iran,

I sincerely extend my gratitude to you all for joining this gathering.
We have come here to convey to the world the voice and message of Iran’s rightful owners, the Iranian people.

Amid an unrelenting uproar over the Iranian regime’s ominous nuclear program and three inhumane wars in the region, we have come to say that those who are currently claiming to speak on behalf of Iran are in fact the enemies of Iran and all Iranians.

The people of Iran want neither nuclear weapons, nor meddling in Iraq, Syria or Yemen, and they do not accept despotism, torture and shackles.

The people of Iran are the tens of millions of enraged teachers, students, nurses and workers who demand freedom, democracy, jobs and better lives.

They say:
First, the velayat-e faqih regime has reached the end of the line.
And, second, the only way to end the violations of human rights in Iran, the nuclear impasse, the crises in the region, and the confrontation with ISIS and terrorism, is to topple the Caliph of regression and terrorism in Iran.

Fundamental Change a Popular Demand

Look at Iran as it has risen up today. It is seething with anger and rage despite nearly 1,800 executions during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure:
─ The recent uprising in Mahabad and the protests in Sanandaj, Sardasht, Saqqez and Marivan, reflect the courage and upheaval of Iranian Kurds in the face of crime and injustice;
─ Successive demonstrations by teachers in all the provinces echo the cries of those who have been ignored and have now risen up to demand the right to life and the right to freedom;
─ The daily strikes and sit-ins by workers reveal the pain of starving families nationwide;
─ Dozens of armed clashes involving young Baluchis, Kurds and Arabs lay bare the fury of a people in chains and denied of all means of protest;
─ Hundreds of hunger strikes and protests by political prisoners are a testament to the perseverance of a nation that has brought the mullahs to their knees even in their own torture chambers;
─ The sit-ins of the mothers of prisoners on death row, the protests of Gonabadi and Ahl-e Haq dervishes, and the suffering of impoverished street venders are the rumblings of a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Look at today’s Iran. Do you see any Iranian who is not discontented or does not yearn for change?
The 15 million deprived and destitute citizens languishing in shanty towns in the suburbs, the 10 to 15 million young people who cannot find jobs and the millions of families feeling the heavy burden of high prices all feel the same pain and they all demand a fundamental change.

So, I am speaking to you, my beloved countrymen and women across the nation.

The resistance you wage, your struggle and your solidarity can withstand any other force.
Stand up to the ruling regime and create 1,000 bastions of rebellion, 1,000 Ashrafs, in Iran.

Yes, the time has come when your protests would spur major uprisings. And the army of rebellion and liberation will be the harbinger of Iran’s freedom for the whole world to see.

The Failure of the Nuclear Strategy

Ladies and gentlemen,

The nuclear program that was one of the velayat-e faqih regime’s means of projecting power for the past quarter century has now become a source of the mullahs’ weakness and impasse.

Why did Khamenei acquiesce to the Geneva Accord, despite being only two to three months away from nuclear weapons capability?

The answer is simple: Because he feared the eruption of another major uprising; because his nuclear strategy has run aground; and because in the words of his foreign minister, the regime’s strategic capacity has been eroded. This explains why the Geneva Accord destabilized the regime while the subsequent Lausanne Agreement accelerated that trend.

Unlike his predecessor Khomeini, who “drank from the chalice of poison” by accepting a ceasefire that ended the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Khamenei could not agree to a comprehensive deal with the P5+1. He says, “I neither agree nor disagree.” This simply means that his regime is at an impasse.

The same circumstances dominate the atmosphere for the final comprehensive agreement. Whether or not Khamenei agrees to it, the regime cannot escape the prospects of being overthrown.

Dismantling the Regime’s Bomb-making Resources

Unfortunately, western governments, the United States in particular, violated UN Security Council resolutions and offered major concessions, thrusting the regime closer to the Bomb.
Therefore, I must remind western governments that the Iranian people and Resistance will not accept any agreement that does not dismantle the regime’s bomb-making infrastructure.

Therefore, UN Security Council resolutions must be implemented fully.

Uranium enrichment must be halted completely.

All suspect sites, military or otherwise, must be inspected.

And the regime must provide answers regarding the military dimensions of its nuclear project and make its nuclear experts available for IAEA questioning.

P5+1 Leaders,

If you do not want a nuclear-armed fundamentalist regime, stop appeasing it. Do not bargain over the Iranian people’s human rights and start recognizing their organized Resistance, which is striving for freedom.

You are gravely mistaken in thinking that there is no other solution. There is a solution for ending the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program: regime change by the Iranian people and Resistance.

Of course, as the Iranian Resistance’s Leader Massoud Rajavi has declared, “Resistance against this regime is our duty and our inalienable right. We have been and will continue to be at war with this regime. With or without enrichment, with or without nuclear weapons, and under any circumstances, the struggle for freedom is still the inalienable right of the Iranian people.”

Failures of the Regime’s Supreme Leader

Ladies and gentlemen,

The regime’s grave situation reveals itself in Khamenei’s failures and in the erosion of his power and authority.

Khamenei has failed to unify ranks among the ruling clique. His acquiescence to Rouhani’s presidency is a reflection of that failure.

At the root of such political impotence, however, were neither international sanctions nor the economic crisis. The most important reason for it was the uprisings and the resistance waged by you, the Iranian people.

Today, the regime’s Supreme Leader and its President have faced off, bashing one another on a daily basis.

The power struggle has reached the tipping point. Rafsanjani has openly called for dividing up the powers and authorities of the Supreme Leader. For the first time, a rival faction has taken hold against Khamenei in the Assembly of Experts. The pro-Khamenei faction is burdened by profound divisions and ruptures. As a result, the axis that was meant to preserve the regime in times of tension and turmoil is itself crumbling.

Indeed, the ruling theocracy has rotted at its core. All indications point to the end of this decadent regime.

Mullahs Trapped in Three Wars

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today, the clerical regime has found itself trapped in three regional wars, in all of which it can neither advance nor retreat. The bubble-like expansion of the ruling theocracy has put it in a perilous predicament.

In Syria, what the mullahs built is teetering because it was erected on quick sand. Although the clerical regime has spent billions of dollars annually to prop up Bashar Assad, today the Syrian dictator is gasping for air.

I hope that on victory day, Khamenei is hauled alongside Assad to the International Criminal Court for the slaughter of 300,000 Syrian men, women and children, among other crimes.

In Iraq, the clerical regime has lost its puppet government of Nouri al-Maliki. This is the beginning of the regime’s demise not only in Iraq but also throughout the region.

Although the regime continues to commit genocide against the Sunnis by the Quds Force that meddles in Iraq under the pretext of fighting ISIS, these efforts will ultimately prove futile and will not make up for the regime’s losses.

And in Yemen, Khamenei sought to take over the country to gain the upper hand during the nuclear talks and amid the regional crisis. This, however, motivated the largest regional coalition against Tehran.

The day Bashar Assad is toppled or when the regime’s forces are defeated in Iraq or in Yemen, the regime’s entire fortification in the Middle East will collapse. The regime lacks the capability to make advances in these three theaters of war and conflict.

At the same time, if it chooses to retreat, it will implode. So, this is an impasse that also attests to the certainty of the overthrow of the velayat-e faqih regime.

The Imperative of Evicting the Regime from Other Regional Countries

Today, policymakers both in the West and in the Arab World stress that ISIS and Bashar Assad are two sides of the same coin. Let me add to that by saying that the Caliph in Tehran is the godfather of both of them.

The fact is that ISIS emerged out of the atrocities perpetrated by Bashar Assad and Maliki on orders from the clerical regime.

I therefore call upon western governments to refrain from siding with the Tehran regime.

In Iraq, do not collaborate with the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or the so-called Shiite militias who are a hundred times more dangerous than the other henchmen.

The solution in Iraq is to evict the mullahs’ forces, to empower Sunni power-sharing, and to arm the Sunni tribes.

The solution in Syria is to evict the Iranian regime’s forces and to support the people of Syria in overthrowing Assad’s dictatorship.

The solution in Yemen is to stand up to Tehran, as the Arab coalition has already begun to do. This course of action must be sustained until the regime’s infiltration is rooted out across the region.

Indeed, the ultimate solution is to evict the Iranian regime from the entire region and to topple the Caliph of regression and terrorism ruling Iran.

An Organized Movement

Ladies and gentlemen,

When social conditions are ripe for change, there is no element more vital than the existence of an organized opposition movement. This explains why the mullahs fear and attempt to destroy the People’s Mojahedin (PMOI/MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The mullahs have always considered the PMOI’s presence in Iraq as an existential threat because the PMOI is spearheading the fight against religious fascism. During the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, the PMOI and the NCRI hoisted the banner of peace in diametric opposition to Khomeini’s persistence on prolonging the war.

The PMOI formed the National Liberation Army.

The PMOI and the NCRI foiled nefarious conspiracies of the Iranian regime and its appeasers, and nullified the unjust terrorist label by scoring victories in more than 20 courts in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe.

The PMOI and the National Council of Resistance discredited and terminated the 15-year-long case launched by the French Judiciary. They upheld the Iranian people’s right for regime change.

Ending Prison-like Conditions and Lifting the Siege in Camp Liberty

Dear friends,

Over the past three decades, the mullahs have endeavored more than anything else to annihilate this movement. Their efforts include thousands of conspiracies and churning out allegations, particularly against the Resistance’s Leader Massoud Rajavi. They also fired 1,000 missiles at PMOI and National Liberation Army bases in 2000. We all recall that in an attempt to crack down on the June 2009 uprisings, the regime first attacked Camp Ashraf.

Similarly, the morning after the defeat of his preferred candidate during the regime’s Presidential elections in 2013, Khamenei ordered a rocket attack on Camp Liberty. And two years ago, when he decided to sign the nuclear accord, he ordered that Ashraf residents be massacred.

The mullahs’ real aim is to annihilate the residents of Liberty or force their surrender to the regime. This explains why the regime is even hindering their relocation out of Iraq.

On the other hand, by repeatedly violating international treaties and reneging on their written obligations toward the Ashrafis, the U.S. and the UN have in practice sided with the religious fascism ruling Iran.
I once again call on the U.S. and the UN to take urgent action to protect Camp Liberty residents and to put an end to the medical and logistical siege on the camp and its prison-like conditions.

If the United States refuses to guarantee protection for the PMOI against attacks by the terrorist Quds Force, it must, at least, return a portion of its members’ personal arms for self-defense and protection.

A Hope and a Cause

Dear friends,

Change in Iran is within reach because not only has the regime rotted to the core, but also because the Iranian society is ready for change, and the path to that change has already been paved. This trail has been blazed and led by Massoud Rajavi and this is his great mandate.

When he left the Shah’s prison, Massoud asked: “Is it possible to shackle and enchain a nation forever?”

In pursuit of the ideal of freedom, Massoud Rajavi created a movement that has reoriented the historical trajectory of Iran towards freedom.

Yes, the national uprising of June 20, 1981, the National Council of Resistance and the National Liberation Army, Ashraf City and Camp Liberty, are all cornerstones that he shaped and inspired in order to win freedom for Iran.

The late Ayatollah Taleqani said that interrogators at Evin Prison were terrified whenever they heard Massoud Rajavi’s name. Today, the ruling mullahs and their cohorts, too, are terrified of both his name as well as his message because he has championed the forbidden word “sarnegooni” (“toppling the regime”) to cultivate a major movement that has succeeded in cornering the religious fascism into an impasse.

He has taught the vanguard generation of Iran that in the struggle against the velayat-e faqih’s barbarism, the only gem blessed with an eternal spirit is one’s commitment to an ideal, having faith, maintaining hope, being truthful, and making sacrifices.

The PMOI, which just this year will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, has advanced a struggle for a cause and an ideal, without focusing on what they will themselves gain from it.

Committing to an ideal means standing as resolute as a mountain, yet flowing as freely as a river, all the while gripping ever so tightly the banner of liberty despite all the prevailing storms and calamities. It means shedding all fears of both the length of the struggle and the enormous price it demands. This is the path that guides the ship of freedom toward the shores of salvation.
From the PMOI founder Mohammad Hanifnejad and his associates to young people who join our ranks every day, from the men who believe in the ideal of equality to the 1,000 vanguard women who form the PMOI’s Central Council, they all have one thing in common. They have chosen the tradition of sacrificing themselves without any reciprocity. They adhere to a tradition that has guided the actions of vanguards and pioneers of freedom since the beginnings of time; the tradition of embracing a fiery commitment and remaining faithful to the idea that the essence of this world is defined by constant change and not by blind fate.
Our Constitution Defends Freedom, Democracy and Equality
With this ideal and this faith, we are determined to build a free and democratic society.

A century ago, the Mojahedin of the Constitutional Movement sought to realize “justice, freedom, equality and unity.” Afterwards, the great nationalist leader of Iran, Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq, rose up and proclaimed, “The goal is to facilitate the participation of people in all respects and to empower them to run the country’s affairs.”

Subsequently, the Fedayeen and the PMOI and other vanguard activists opened the path to overthrowing the Shah’s dictatorship.

And now, our Resistance – with a galaxy of fallen heroes and heroines from Ashraf Rajavi and Moussa Khiabani to Sedigheh Mojaveri and Neda Hassani to Zohreh Ghaemi and Giti Givechian – has arisen to ensure freedom of choice for each and every one of our fellow Iranians.

We have rejected the ruling tyrannical regime. We have rejected a religion based on compulsion and misogyny. And we have rejected the Constitution of the velayat-e faqih.

Our Constitution respects freedom, democracy and equality.

Our Constitution has not been drafted by the Assembly of Experts, which is a collection of criminals. Today, it remains engraved in the hearts of each and every Iranian. And, tomorrow, it will be drafted by elected representatives of the Iranian people in a Constituent Assembly.

This Constitution is founded on a free, tolerant and progressive republic. It rests on pluralism, separation of religion and state, women’s equality and the active and equal participation of women in political leadership.

We believe in equal rights for all ethnic and religious minorities and a society devoid of torture and executions.

My fellow compatriots, those who have gathered here, and my dear compatriots who hear my voice right now across Iran and anywhere else in the world, I ask you: are you ready to expand the campaign for Iran’s liberation, and for the overthrow the velayat-e faqih regime?

To carry out this great responsibility, which heralds a bright future, let us pledge before Iran’s history and nation that yes, we are ready, we are ready, we are ready.

Indeed, with our hope and faith in freedom, we have waged a persistent struggle for half a century and against two dictatorships. And we will continue this struggle with even greater hope and determination until freedom and democracy reign supreme in Iran.

Yes, we can break the chains
And flow to the sea like a river
With a radiant cause, we can
Destroy the darkness of injustice
We can and we must sing in unison
In every breath, of Iran’s freedom
No doubt, the future belongs to you

Hundreds of hails to you and to your struggle.

May victory be yours!