Maryam Rajavi: From Iran to Iraq and Lebanon, we are seeing that the demise of the mullahs’ regime in getting closer

Maryam Rajavi’s remarks in meeting with French elected officials

A group of elected officials and personalities of France took part in a gathering at Auvers-sur-Oise on Thursday, November 7, 2019, meeting with Maryam Rajavi. They discussed some of the most important political issues of the day regarding Iran and the situation of the mullahs’ regime in Iran and the Middle East. In part of her speech to this gathering, Maryam Rajavi said:

Today, Ashraf-3 has become the focal point of hope for the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom. The Resistance Units have expanded their activities inside Iran.

For the past several months, Iran’s youths have been denying the mullahs any respite. They have been defacing banners supportive of the regime’s leaders everywhere.

Since the uprising which began in December 2017, the Iranian society is in a volatile state and despite massive repression, protests and demonstrations have been continuing in different parts of the country.

Most recently, thousands of people in Lordegan, southwest Iran, staged a major protest, setting fire to the offices of Governor and Khamenei’s representative as well as to other regime’s centers of power in the city.

Students, teachers, workers, and the retirees have continued their protests. The citizens are enraged because of a four-decade-long suppression, misogyny, financial corruption, economic crisis, and the destruction of the environment. The people seek regime change.

These developments, coupled with the popular movements in Iraq and Lebanon, further undermine the status of the regime. As you know all too well, following the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the United States handed over Iraq to Iran on a silver platter. Since then, violence, extremism and sectarian conflict have expanded in Iraq and from there have spread to the whole region.

In Lebanon, the Iranian regime had deadlocked all political and social developments through the Hezbollah, taking the country hostage.

Today, in Iraq, the Iranian regime’s symbols are being torched. Posters carrying pictures of Ali Khamenei, Khomeini and Qassem Soleimani are being torn down, just like in Iran.

Protesters attacked the Iranian regime’s consulate in the holy city of Karbala. Tehran’s proxy militias opened fire, killing dozens. In Lebanon, there’s increasing opposition to the role played by the Hezbollah.

Khamenei said that Iraq, Syria and Lebanon represented his regime’s strategic depth and if the Revolutionary Guards did not fight in Syria and Iraq they would have to fight the enemy in the streets of Tehran and other cities. And now, this strategic depth is crumbling. From Iran to Iraq and Lebanon we are seeing that the demise of the ruling mullahs is getting closer.

Khamenei has warned his military forces not to underestimate the enemy and keep it under surveillance. Who is this enemy? The Iranian people.

Last week, in a meeting at the French National Assembly I said that engaging in endless talks with the leaders of the mullahs’ regime was the wrong approach. The mullahs are unreliable interlocutors. In face of this diplomatic impasse, France must adopt a different approach and stand by the Iranian people and their Resistance, something which you, as friends of the Iranian people and Resistance, have pioneered.

I thank you all very much.