Speech at Senate of France
On behalf of the Iranian people and Resistance I congratulate you, the people and government France on the advent of the 2014.
I hope that the New Year would be a year of progress and prosperity for France and that the Iranian people would see France standing with them in their struggle for freedom, democracy and human rights.
I also wanted to congratulate the founders of the French Committee for a Democratic Iran, Senator Jean Pierre Michel and Messrs. Alain Vivien and François Colcombet. I also congratulate Senator Alan Neri. This Committee was formed in this very location seven years ago and has stood by us in this long and arduous struggle.
Ladies and gentlemen,
From all indications, Islamic fundamentalism and wars it has instigated represent the greatest crisis in 2014. Islamic fundamentalists disguised as diverse groups pose this threat. But the force guiding that threat is the Iranian regime. The only antidote to this fundamentalism is a cultural alternative represented by the Iranian Resistance.
Previously, this threat manifested itself in the form of promoting fundamentalism and terrorist operations. Today, it has expanded to a full-fledged war.
The most vivid example is the extensive role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the war against the people of Syria in the past two years.
In Iraq, the mullahs pushed their puppet government into war against the oppressed people of that country, especially in provinces where majorities are Sunni.
Simultaneously, the mullahs have taken hostage the fate of Lebanon through a branch of the Quds Force, namely the Hezbollah. They have developed a multitude of terrorist plans for Afghanistan, Bahrain, Yemen and other countries in the region as well.
Therefore, on the eve of the Geneva 2 Conference, I must reiterate that if the world community wants to avoid the failure of this gathering as was the case previously, it must focus on the main problem affecting Syria: the extensive intervention of the Iranian regime.
Tehran regime officials view Syria as Iran’s 35th province and Iraq as part of their property. In other words, in order to expand terrorism and fundamentalism, the mullahs was to dominate Baghdad, Damascus and Lebanon and reach the Mediterranean.
For this reason, evicting the Iranian regime from Syria is the only solution for ending the rule of the murderous tyranny in that country.
We support the Syrian National Coalition who is against participation of the Iranian regime in the Conference and welcome the decisive position of the French government, which was quite effective in preventing the participation of the mullahs in the Geneva 2 Conference.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Following the June election masquerade in Iran, despite the moderate pretenses of the regime’s new president, executions and crackdown have intensified.
In 2013, the mullahs hanged more than 700 people, the highest number of executions in Iran in the past decade.
International human rights organizations have described Iran under the rule of the mullahs thus:
– It has the highest rate of executions per capita;
– It is the largest prison for journalists in the Middle East;
– It is one of the 10 countries were the greatest crackdown is applied to Christians; and
– It is one of the largest customers of internet censoring and filtering equipment.
On another front, the mullahs and their puppet government in Iraq jointly launched five attacks against camps belonging to the Iranian Resistance in 2013.
The largest such attack on September 1 against Camp Ashraf was a horrific massacre, a crime against humanity. Iraqi Special Forces implemented a plan by the Quds Force and massacred 52 members of the Resistance, execution-style and took seven hostages.
In truth, the mullahs are simultaneously waging a war against the Iranian people and the international community.
I salute the 2.155 million people of Iraq who signed a petition, calling for the protection of the residents of Camp Liberty and the freedom of the seven hostages.
They also convey the outcries of the Iraqi people who are incensed over the mullahs’ domination of Iraq. They are saying that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is not an independent current, but under the command of the mullahs in Tehran. The most senior Sunni leaders in Iraq have also stressed that “those who rule Iraq are petty functionaries of the Iranian regime.”
Honorable guests,
Two decades ago, the Iranian Resistance warned of the danger of Islamic fundamentalism directed by the mullahs. Regrettably, Western governments ignored those warnings.
Western governments suffer from three fundamental misperceptions:
First, they believe that by offering concessions to the mullahs they would become a bit more moderate or tamed.
The approach by the U.S. and the West during the Geneva talks and to the November 24 nuclear accord suffers from the same problem, though France’s intervention helped correct it somewhat.
The implementation of the Accord began yesterday. This means that the mullahs, pressured by popular discontent and internal crises, have retreated one step. If the West had shown decisiveness, the mullahs’ nuclear program would have been dismantled at this very stage. But there’s still time.
Western governments must compel the regime to accept and fully implement the additional protocol and agree to snap inspections. They must compel the mullahs to shut down their nuclear sites completely and comply with the Security Council resolutions.
Second, Western governments are eyeing economic deals with an anti-human regime which is the main threat to the world today.
The main economic interlocutor is the most murderous agent of suppression and terrorism, namely the Revolutionary Guards.
Third, West has adopted a wrong attitude towards the resistance movement, which holds the key to change in Iran.
In the past two decades, the West sacrificed human rights, freedom and the Iranian people’s resistance at the altar of its dealings with the mullahs.
Under pretext of nuclear negotiations, west must not forget neither executions nor mullahs’ crimes in Iran as well as other countries.
In recent years, the United States and EU governments maintained silence and inaction regarding the massacre of the Iranian dissidents in Camps Ashraf and Liberty.
Now, the mullahs and their puppet government in Iraq are planning to exploit the crisis in Iraq and carry out a major massacre at Camp Liberty and blame it on Al-Qaeda.
We are at a critical occasion.
We expect France to take this case to the Security Council of the United Nations to ensure the protection of the residents of Liberty and their transfer to the Unites States or Europe.
Accordingly, the Iranian Resistance asks France, to use its standing in the Security Council as well as the European Union and its influence in Iraq to help realize the following:
The release of seven Ashraf hostages;
The immediate transfer of the liberty residents to Europe and the United States;
Providing urgent protective equipment at Liberty;
Round-the-clock stationing of UN monitors accompanied by a Blue Helmet team inside Camp Liberty;
Conducting a comprehensive and independent UN investigation into the massacre at Ashraf; and
The sale of the properties at Ashraf by the residents’ legal representative to provide for the cost of transferring them outside Iraq.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
The mullahs’ attacks on the members of the resistance and the relentless wave of executions are interned to prevent change in Iran.
The Iranian Resistance represents this change by offering a democratic platform.
We are struggling for the establishment of a pluralist republic based on the separation of religion and state and complete gender equality.
We are working to ensure respect for human rights, the abolition of death penalty and seek a non-nuclear Iran at peace with the international community.
We call on the French Senate and the people and government of France to help the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom.
Thank you all very much.
