Speech of Maryam Rajavi at the Free Iran 2024 World Summit – Day 2

Appeasement of the Mullahs Betrays Freedom, Peace, Justice, and Human Rights

Fellow compatriots,
Distinguished personalities and lawmakers,
I warmly greet all of you on the second day of the Free Iran World Summit. This summit coincides with the significant triumph of the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance, marked by the nationwide boycott of the sham elections of the religious dictatorship by 88 percent of eligible voters.
The boycott highlights the determination of the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance to overthrow the clerical regime and liberate Iran.
The absence of mass participation, combined with election engineering failing to produce a clear result in the first round and necessitating a run-off, clearly indicates divisions, diversions, and schisms within the regime and its various factions. This situation proves the regime’s protective walls are full of cracks and holes.
The outcome of the second round is also neither vague nor complicated. Most people believe that Khamenei, through his well-known methods of election engineering—massive fraud and manipulations by the Interior Ministry under the guise of vote collection—will ensure the IRGC guard Saeed Jalili, who represented the regime during its nuclear negotiations and is also a member of the Supreme National Security Council, emerges from the ballot box.
However, there is little difference between Jalili and the other candidate, who has explicitly stated that his red line is deviating from Khamenei’s dictates and desires.

The Catastrophic Nature of Appeasement

In response to the Iranian people’s uprising, which is progressing under all circumstances and is centered around an organized resistance moving toward significant political and social change, Khamenei employs both repression and warfare to protect his decaying regime. Simultaneously, he seeks support and protection through a policy of appeasement.
When we speak of appeasement, we are reminded of Europe’s historical policy with Nazi Germany. Although the current state and characteristics of the religious fascism ruling Iran greatly differ from the World War II era in Europe, the catastrophic nature of appeasement remains unchanged. It paves the way for the dark forces of history, representing a dagger to the heart of freedom, peace, justice, resistance, and human rights.
Over the past year, we have seen Western governments continue to capitulate to the clerical regime’s policy of blackmail, while the latter claims victims daily through suppression, warmongering, and terrorism both within Iran and abroad.

Democracies that Capitulate to Hostage Taking

The race to provide incentives to these butchers has been clearly observed in Sweden, Belgium, France, and the U.S., continuing to bolster the clerics’ market for hostage-taking and human trafficking to an even greater extent. This endless business model, initiated during the eras of Khomeini and Khamenei, has persisted for 45 years. Regime theorists have conceptualized it as a new form of power that transcends economic, technical, and military capabilities. Western governments have become regular consumers of this new market, thus degraded to what Massoud Rajavi has termed a “hostage democracy.”
However, the perpetual hostages and ongoing victims are the Iranian people, human rights, and the angel of liberty.
This is where all principles are sacrificed to bolster a brutal dictatorship. They sell equipment and software to the oppressors of the Iranian people’s uprisings.
The clerics and their intelligence services have already penetrated some Western circles and parliaments. But what should be said about the hiring of lobbyists and regime supporters in some Western ministries?
Where and how are the regime’s military drones manufactured? Astonishingly, their engines are produced by Austrian and Canadian companies, and according to U.S. lawmakers, at least 75% of their components are sourced from U.S. markets, with no fewer than 10 British universities collaborating in the necessary research.
There was a time when they argued that concessions to the clerics were made to bolster the bogus moderates. Now, tell us, who is strengthened by freeing a bomb-wielding terrorist diplomat and a mass murderer from Gohardasht Prison?
Previously, you claimed to be reforming religious fascism. Now that you are engaging with missile-toting Revolutionary Guards, who exactly has reformed whom?
Over the last four decades, Western politicians have repeatedly granted concessions to the clerics, certainly securing specific commercial or diplomatic gains. However, when these decisions undergo the scrutiny of historical judgment, it becomes evident that this policy was founded on shortsightedness and transient interests, causing severe harm to the people of Iran, the Middle East, and global peace and security.

Seventeen years ago, the Chief Justice of England and Wales in his final ruling regarding the revocation of the terrorist designation against the PMOI, described the British government’s use of the label to gain favor with the clerics as “perverse.” This characterization accurately reflects all aspects of appeasement policy.
Was the coup against Dr. Mossadegh’s nationalist government not “perverse”? A coup that facilitated 25 years of repression and subsequently heralded the rise of a tyrant like Khomeini, causing immense damage to Middle Eastern peace and resulting in millions of victims and refugees.
Wasn’t the terrorist designation of the PMOI, at the behest of a theocratic dictatorship, essentially a ransom to the clerics?
We saw how this designation was repeatedly overturned by courts in Luxembourg, London, Washington, Paris, Bern, and Berlin.
Wasn’t the bombing of the PMOI in Iraq to the clerics’ advantage?
Aren’t the Iranian regime’s proxies who have plagued the region, the products of the policy of appeasement? If not, what are they?

The Vicious Cycle of Four Decades of Appeasement Policy

In 2002, the Iranian Resistance exposed the regime’s secret nuclear sites.
This revelation was an extraordinary turning point that facilitated the end of the regime’s bomb-making program. Yet, by continuously granting concessions, Western governments provided the regime with ample opportunity to edge ever closer to a nuclear bomb.
Another concern is Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guards. All governments are well aware of the corps’ malicious role; still, why does the European Union delay labeling this group as a terrorist organization?
Why did the U.S. release $6 billion of the Iranian people’s assets to the regime?
Why, according to the former so-called reformist Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who spoke a few days ago, were oil sanctions loosened, funneling over $100 billion into the regime’s coffers?

Why is the advice to the United Kingdom not to designate the Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, and why is there a suggestion to Europe to soften its stance on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and bomb-making? Why? Why?
Indeed, what is the strategy of these appeasers? One U.S. newspaper wrote, “If it can even be called a strategy, it is to allow Tehran to escalate, escalate, and escalate, and then appease, appease, and appease!”
Yes, this reflects the destructive cycle of four decades of Western policy of appeasement towards religious fascism, which must be terminated.

The Solution vis-à-vis Religious Tyranny

One might ask whether the history of this region was inevitably doomed to traverse through this bloody and fiery abyss. Was there truly no path towards freedom and peace for our people? Is there no remedy for the bloodshed and destruction wrought by religious tyranny?
Indeed, there is both a pathway and a solution.
The people of Iran have put forth an alternative and a solution: a vision of a free Iran, devoid of torture and executions, a democratic republic where religion is separate from state governance, where gender equality prevails, and where oppressed nationalities enjoy autonomy.

In 2006, we presented the Ten-Point Plan of the Iranian Resistance for a free Iran. The plan reiterates the following:

In 2006, we presented the Ten-Point Plan of the Iranian Resistance for a free Iran. The plan reiterates the following:

1. Rejection of Velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule). Affirmation of the people’s sovereignty in a republic founded on universal suffrage and pluralism;

2. Freedom of speech, freedom of political parties, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the internet. Dissolution and disbanding of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the terrorist Qods Force, plainclothes groups, the unpopular Basij, the Ministry of Intelligence, Council of the Cultural Revolution, and all suppressive patrols and institutions in cities, villages, schools, universities, offices, and factories;

3. Commitment to individual and social freedoms and rights in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights. Disbanding all agencies in charge of censorship and inquisition. Seeking justice for massacred political prisoners, prohibition of torture, and the abolishment of the death penalty;

4. Separation of religion and state, and freedom of religions and faiths;

5. Complete gender equality in the realms of political, social, cultural, and economic rights, and equal participation of women in political leadership. Abolishment of any form of discrimination; the right to choose one’s own clothing freely; the right to freely marry and divorce, and to obtain education and employment. Prohibition of all forms of exploitation against women under any pretext;

6. An independent judiciary and legal system consistent with international standards based on the presumption of innocence, the right to defense counsel, right of appeal, and the right to be tried in a public court. Full independence of judges. Abolishment of the mullahs’ Sharia law and dissolution of Islamic Revolutionary Courts;

7. Autonomy for and removal of double injustices against Iranian nationalities and ethnicities consistent with the NCRI‘s plan for the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan;

8. Justice and equal opportunities in the realms of employment and entrepreneurship for all people of Iran in a free market economy. Restoration of the rights of blue-collar workers, farmers, nurses, white-collar workers, teachers, and retirees;

9. Protection and rehabilitation of the environment, which has been massacred under the rule of the mullahs;

10. A non-nuclear Iran that is also devoid of weapons of mass destruction. Peace, co-existence, and international and regional cooperation.

In the name of the people of Iran those who are enraged by poverty and oppression, those who thirst for freedom and democracy we cry out: Enough with the hypocrisy and profiteering that sustain this religious dictatorship.
Cease obstructing the path to democratic change in Iran! Let our oppressed people forge their own destiny and embrace their freedom.
Our people and the Iranian Resistance have never sought, nor do they seek any foreign party to intervene to bring change to Iran. As Massoud Rajavi, the Leader of the Iranian Resistance has articulated, “In the quest to topple the regime, the combined efforts of our heroic people and their freedom-seeking children are more than sufficient.”

Thus, we urge Western governments to honor their neglected international obligations vis-à-vis the most significant threat to global peace and security today.
A resounding majority across 34 legislative bodies, joined by over 4,000 elected representatives of the people in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and Arab and African countries, alongside numerous international figures, and former world leaders, have expressed unwavering support for the Iranian Resistance.

In conclusion, allow me to summarize the demands of the Iranian Resistance:

– Designate the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the clerics’ Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) as terrorist organizations and expel their agents and mercenaries from your nations.

– Agree to the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute the regime’s leaders for their roles in executions and massacres.

– Denounce the pre-emptive scheme by Khamenei and the Iranian regime’s Judiciary reflected in the absentia trials of 104 members of the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance.- Utilize the brief remaining term of UN Resolution 2231 to activate the snapback mechanism.

– Recognize the regime as a pressing threat to global peace and security under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

– And lastly, formally acknowledge the legitimate struggle of the Iranian people to overthrow the regime and the fight by the rebellious youth against the Revolutionary Guards and the clerics’ Intelligence Ministry.

God bless you all!