Maryam Rajavi’s message to the to the Iranian convention in Toronto, Canada supporting freedom fighters in Ashraf City

Iranian Communities Convention In Toronto Canada

Dear Friends and Compatriots,

I would like to extend my warmest greetings to you who have gathered in Toronto today to protest the Iranian regime’s meddling and conspiracies in Iraq and express your support for the freedom fighters in Ashraf city.

We all salute the brave political prisoners in the torture center in Gohardasht in Karaj, Iran, who have been on hunger strike for four weeks now.

Your gathering and the continuous activities and events by our compatriots in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the world, demonstrate that your voice is the voice of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy, and that the hateful voice that is raised to engulf Islamic countries in the flames of war, to remove borders in order to form a medieval Caliphate, has nothing to do with the Iranian people and is not what the Iranian nation aspires to.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently carried out a major political purge within his regime. The contraction of the regime that followed made the regime more fragile. Since then, the clerical regime has embarked on a course of increasing belligerence, threatening and intimidating evermore:

In the nuclear file, the regime has reneged on its agreement with the EU3 on uranium conversion in Isfahan. It has rejected all proposals and incentives put forward by Western countries and Russia. It now is threatening to start uranium enrichment at Natanz.

In Iraq, the regime is engaged in terrorism, kidnappings, repression, intimidations, and various election frauds. It has also created numerous torture centers in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

In Iran, the clerical dictatorship has stepped up repression, and vastly increased the number of public hangings and daily arrests.

In the face of the Iranian people’s resistance, the regime has launched an unprecedented conspiracy against Ashraf city and a vast disinformation campaign.

The mullahs are not satisfied with all this, and have in recent weeks opened a new front with demagogic speeches by their president. He openly agitates for war within Islamic countries and wiping out whole countries in the world. He calls for a global Islamic empire under the guise of “Union of Islamic Countries” and advocates erasing national boundaries and instituting repressive laws in the name of Islam. He demands that “Islamic faith and covenants” and a “complete Islamic judicial system” be implemented. He is in effect demanding the expansion of his reactionary regime’s laws and anti-human judicial practices to all Islamic countries. All the while he declares his “hate” for civilized societies and anyone who calls for liberty and human rights. These provocations and adventurism are part of the Vali-Faqih’s (supreme leader) aggressive policy to find some way out of the regime’s crisis of existence and delay its inevitable downfall.

Since 2003 when the whole region entered into a strategic state of flux with the Iraq war, the regime’s supreme leader knew that time was up on his maneuvers of moderation and his beguiling tactics in blocking any real change for 16 years. The event was a watershed and the regime’s supreme leader was forced to choose his way. Of course, the mullahs did not have the capacity to choose to go down the road of liberty and democracy or to accept change and moderation. Therefore, they chose to aggressively move forward on the road of adventurism and warmongering and belligerence.

The theocratic regime seeks to keep its balance in the new strategic environment with a high tempo of aggressive maneuvers and use the situation to its own advantage in order to hide the underlying weakness inherent in its regime. The aim of the highly aggressive strategy is to create an impression that “Iran has an immeasurable capacity for destabilizing the whole of the Middle East,” as one state-run newspaper said.

The situation is comparable to the last phase of the unpatriotic war Khomeini instigated in the 1980s in which he would send thousands of troops to certain death in lost battles just to show that the regime is still on an offensive footing. Now as before, any pause in the regime’s current posturing, let alone any back pedaling, will cause it to lose its balance and beset it with insurmountable domestic and foreign crises.

The discovery of numerous torture centers in the center of Baghdad, sending truckloads of fraudulent ballots from Iran which the New York Times reported, are only a small part of the regime’s meddling in Iraq, and are part of the above policy.

The clerical regime in Iran is directly meddling in the elections in Iraq and supporting and carrying out terrorist acts on a daily basis. They now direct parts of the intelligence and security apparatus and control torture centers in Iraq. At the same time they are conducting espionage against Iraqi democratic forces under cover of educational, religious, and humanitarian assistance groups.

This very serious situation and the enormous dangers it poses for the whole region, is the result of major mistakes in the aftermath of the war. The coalition forces should have blocked interference by the mullahs in Iraq but instead bombed and disarmed the Iranian Mojahedin and tipped the strategic balance in this sensitive region of the world. The coalition initially entered into an understanding with the clerical regime next door and opened the borders and all doors to their participation. Rafsanjani described the policy in a speech ten days ago and said: “All recent events in the region, even the Western and American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq have in the end been to Iran’s benefit.” However, Khamenei cannot hide the underlying weakness of his regime with such meddling in Iraq or the nuclear weapons uproar.

Analysts that have visited Tehran recently say “The Iranian regime is an empty shell, but it is trying to put forth a show of strength by turning the clock back.”

The mullahs know that the ground is shifting under their feet. That is why they are terrified of the prospects of the Iranian resistance movement and plot extensively against it.

During the past month, the mullahs invited five top Iraqi officials to Tehran to consult with them about ways of applying pressure on the Mojahedin and Ashraf City. The regime is hatching all the conspiracies that have resulted in the cutoff of food and medical supplies to Ashraf City. The regime has also started a large campaign to strike a blow at the Resistance from within and to rid itself of this bastion of Iranian freedom.

Of course, their desperate efforts have been in vain and will never succeed.
Dear Compatriots and Friends of the Resistance,

Events of the past three years have proven a basic fact that fundamentalism and dictatorship in Iran are obstacles to democracy and stability in Iraq. The answer lies in a solution to the Iran issue. The outcome of Iran’s destiny is tied to the outcome of a struggle in which Ashraf forms the central issue and you and our compatriots inside Iran and abroad have risen to support Ashraf.

The present retrenchment and purge in the regime is a sign of the mullahs’ weakness and dead-end that they have run up against. It is also a sign of the political and organizational growth of the resistance. It is up to you to neutralize the regime’s conspiracies and delineate the political battle lines against it.