Maryam Rajavi: The mullahs wage war to conceal crisis of being overthrown
Speech to the international gathering entitled, “Mullahs’ regime, source of war and instability in the region”
Albania, June 29, 2019 – An international delegation visited Ashraf 3 and an international conference was held in the presence of Maryam Rajavi.
The conference entitled, “Mullahs’ regime, source of war and instability in the region; Iranian Resistance, messenger of peace and freedom,” featured parliamentarians and political dignitaries, jurists and religious personalities from Europe and Australia.
The speakers to this conference reiterated the need to adopt a firm policy to confront the Iranian regime’s warmongering and terrorism and holding the mullahs accountable for their violations of human rights and crimes against the people of Iran. They expressed solidarity with the Iranian people’s Resistance and uprisings, and declared support for the democratic alternative, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and Maryam Rajavi’s platform.
In her speech to this conference, Maryam Rajavi said;
Reverend father, Bishop Gaillot,
The honorable lawmakers in the parliaments of Switzerland, Germany and Australia,
Dear friends and supporters of the Iranian Resistance in France, Switzerland and Britain,
My dear sisters and brothers,
I welcome you all to Ashraf 3.
Your presence at the home of the Iranian Resistance, more than anything else, sends a message of solidarity to the people of Iran who are fed up with the ruling theocracy, and are poised to topple it.
Our nation is not identified by a moribund, medieval regime but by its arisen people determined to achieve freedom, democracy and equality. As such, Ashraf is at the heart of Iran, an Iran that has arisen, the cradle of uprisings and revolution and the home to resistance units and rebellious cities.
These days, the world was on the one hand witness to the clerical regime’s hostility and belligerence, evidenced in its successive attacks on oil tankers and its missile launches. On the other hand, it heard the cries for Iran’s freedom, echoed by Iranians in their rallies and marches in Brussels and Washington, D.C.
Hail to freedom lovers and rebellious supporters.
Who is the warmonger?
In recent weeks, the Iranian crisis entered a critical phase.
In May, the mullahs’ regime attacked four commercial ships at the port of Fujairah.
Two days later, its surrogates used drones to blow up two major oil pipelines in Saudi Arabia.
Five days later, the mullahs’ mercenaries fired a rocket which landed near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Subsequently, the regime’s surrogates fired multiple missiles at airports in Saudi Arabia, one after the other.
On June 12 and 13, the Prime Minister of Japan was in Tehran to mediate, carrying with him a message from the U.S. President. But Khamenei rejected the offer to the point of virtually insulting Mr. Abe. Even worse, on the same day, the regime attacked a Japanese tanker in the Sea of Oman near the Iranian coast.
Indeed, a guest who had come to mediate could not have been subjected to a more degrading treatment as Shinzo Abe was because the mullahs did not even wait for his departure from Tehran before attacking the ship.
And exactly one week later, on June 20, in a provocative act, the mullahs shot down an unmanned U.S. drone flying over the Persian Gulf in international airspace.
In an official statement, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took responsibility for the attack, boasting that it had inflicted $200 million worth of damages on “the enemy.”
On June 25, the regime’s president Hassan Rouhani lauded the IRGC for targeting the “enemy,” saying that he would kiss the hands of the military and the IRGC personnel who carried out the attack.
Of course, after 40 years, the people of Iran are well aware that the enemy is not on the other side of distant oceans; the ruling mullahs are the enemy, who stand face-to-face against the Iranian people.
For their part, an assortment of regime apologists, lobbyists, operatives and agents, who for years had accused the Iranian Resistance and their freedom-loving and humanitarian supporters of being warmongers, claimed that those advocating for human rights and freedom in Iran seek to lure the U.S. to wage war. What a disgraceful lie!
Now, have these attacks made it clear to proponents of appeasement that the Iranian regime is the very source of conflict in the Middle East? Or this time, do they want to give the mullahs a peace prize?
Perhaps it would be better to ask those who described opposition to human rights abuses in Iran or the Resistance’s revelations against the mullahs’ clandestine nuclear sites as setting the stage for war: do they feel ashamed or are they still looking for a way to exonerate the regime?
Indeed, defending the religious fascism under the banner of opposing war is truly disgraceful and, of course, does not beguile anyone.
Freedom, democracy and human rights are the Iranian people’s inalienable rights
The main question is: Are the Iranian people not entitled to freedom, democracy and human rights?
Is the world aware of what our women and young people endure in the clerical regime’s prisons, such as the Fashafouyeh Penitentiary and torture chamber?
On behalf of the Iranian Resistance, I have repeatedly urged the UN Secretary General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council and other international human rights organizations to take urgent action to free those arrested in Iran. I urged them to send fact-finding delegations to inspect the Iranian regime’s prisons and visit the prisoners.
During the December 2017- January 2018 uprisings in Iran, at least 14 prisoners arrested during the uprisings were tortured to death.
Why are the European governments silent? Why do the people who are so concerned about trade with the clerical regime refuse to send a single delegation to inspect the prisons and inquire about the plight of those detained during the uprising, especially women detainees? What do women detainees expect from Mrs. Mogherini?
During your visit to Tehran when you were taking selfies with regime officials, should you not have at least asked the regime’s president Rouhani to allow you to visit, albeit symbolically, the prisons?
The volatile state of society and the mullahs’ need to create crises
Today, we are facing a volatile society where the people have risen up and are poised to overthrow the ruling religious fascism.
The mullahs did everything in their power to torture, detain and suppress, but failed to restore the previous equilibrium that had been upset. This is because a massive movement has stood up against the mullahs and is ready to take a leap forward. A combative movement of enlightened and deprived youths. The torrent of demands from the oppressed, the plundered and the destitute has given rise to a movement at the center of which Units of Rebellion have blossomed, much like embers beneath the ashes. Society is ready, in revolt and like a powder keg.
This explosive situation has compelled the mullahs to resort to crisis-manufacturing.
Let’s not forget that Khamenei described his criminal wars in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon as “an important part of the regime’s security.” He and other regime leaders have repeatedly acknowledged that without waging wars abroad, they would have to confront the arisen people of Iran “in Kermanshah and Hamedan” or “in Sistan, Azerbaijan, Shiraz and Isfahan.”
In his analysis last November, Massoud Rajavi said that these developments have significantly weakened the regime and taken away its ability to find “any real or serious way out [of the crisis].” As to what the regime would do next, he said, “Obviously, we would welcome our enemy retreating…but what we should expect is more suppression and contraction.”
This is exactly what happened in practice. As a testament to this fact, consider Khamenei’s shocking appointment of Ebrahim Raisi as the Judiciary Chief. He is one of the most notorious criminals in Iran’s history and was involved in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988. In an audiotape recording that has been made public, Hossein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s heir apparent at the time, is heard telling the henchman Raisi and his accomplices, “In my opinion, the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us, has been committed by you. Your (names) will in the future be etched in the annals of history as criminals.”
Yes, this is the direction that the regime has chosen. It is grasping at straws and resorting to terrorist plots against the Mojahedin. Not a day goes by without the regime continuing its smear campaign against, and its demonization of, the Iranian Resistance.
In political and economic terms, it is also moving to close ranks and consolidate power within the regime.
Of course, the regime continues to count on Europe’s policy of appeasement to help it carry on the campaign of demonization, terrorism and warmongering.
Imagine for a moment, what would have happened if such a disastrous policy would not have been adopted from the outset. If that were the case, then:
The massacre of 30,000 political prisoners would not have been met with silence.
Progress would not have been made on nuclear bomb-making facilities. As the regime’s president has acknowledged, the nuclear program’s infrastructure had been set up in a political climate characterized by appeasement.
Neither would the mullahs have succeeded in their hidden occupation of Iraq and in imposing their destructive domination over that country.
The Syrian tragedy with half a million deaths and millions of displaced people would never have taken place.
Our country’s economy would not have drifted towards collapse and ruin.
And most important of all, the life of this medieval regime would not have been prolonged by the terrorist designation and suppression of the Iranian Resistance.
The air strikes on the bases of the Mojahedin and the National Liberation Army in 2003, and the simultaneous clampdown on the Iranian Resistance in France on June 17 of that year, had consequence that lasted for a decade, and they acted as unmatched gifts to prolong the life of a regime that was supposed to reform or moderate.
Fortunately, the Iranian Resistance prevailed over all these conspiracies, dumfounding the regime and getting ahead of it. This was accomplished with the backing of the Iranian people, its supporters and all of you here today.
Today, all of us, Ashraf and all Ashrafis, are grateful to you for your unsparing support in the most difficult circumstances over the past two decades.
Mullahs intensify warmongering and terrorism as appeasement reaches new heights
Political and commercial partners of the mullahs’ rule on both sides of the Atlantic deliberately cover up the obvious reality that the regime’s warmongering intensified after the July 2015 nuclear accord.
On the day of the signing of that agreement, I emphasized on behalf of the Iranian Resistance, that in order to avoid war in the region, the P5+1 “should … firmly insist on evicting the regime from the Middle East and prevent its interferences all over the region. This is a fundamental necessity that needs to be included in any agreement as a foundational principle.”
Two years later, in December 2017, I told the European Parliament on behalf of the Iranian Resistance, that “if the ruling religious fascism is not dealt with decisively, it would inflict a deadly conflict on the region and the world.”
The P5+1, of course, sought to block the mullahs’ path to nuclear weapons through that deal.
Due to the many deficiencies in the nuclear agreement, however, the mullahs used it as a license to spread war and terrorism and suppress the opposition and the Resistance.
Human rights and democracy did not have any place in that so-called comprehensive agreement.
And exactly one day after signing the accord, yes exactly on the next day, the regime test-fired missiles, making a mockery of Europe’s resolve.
Now, let’s take a glance at the mullahs’ record since that day:
First, the accelerated expansion of its missile program. Last December, the UN Secretary General announced that the Iranian regime had continued its missile tests contrary to UNSC Resolution 2231.
And second, providing a large share of these missiles to terrorist groups in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.
Last November, the French President confirmed that the ballistic missile fired from Yemen towards the Saudi capital belonged to the Iranian regime.
Third, the bloodshed and destruction in Syria.
And, fourth, expansion of the war in Yemen and growing meddling in Iraq.
The conclusion is that the mullahs’ terrorism and warmongering, coupled with their demonization of the Mojahedin, intensified and expanded precisely during the period that the policy of appeasement was intensifying.
In the 1980s, the U.S. administration began testing the efficacy of appeasement vis-à-vis Tehran by secretly sending its National Security Advisor to Tehran to hand over TOW missiles to the regime. Precisely at the same time, Khomeini stepped up war offensives against Iraq.
The 1990s saw the so-called “moderate” posturing by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as the terrorist designation of the PMOI/MEK in the U.S.
During this period, the regime conducted bombings in Saudi Arabia (Khobar Tower) and Buenos Aires. It also carried out hundreds of terrorist operations against Iranian dissidents abroad, and secretly began building facilities to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Then in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. opened that country’s gates to the regime’s IRGC. To appease the mullahs, the U.S. bombed and disarmed the Mojahedin, and placed them under a de facto house arrest.
In those years, the mullahs turned Iraq into a launch pad for exporting terrorism and fundamentalism to the rest of the region.
At the same time, European governments offered packages of incentives to the regime instead of standing up to its nuclear program. They even proscribed the PMOI/MEK as a concession to the mullahs. Subsequently, the mullahs broke the seals on their nuclear facilities and rapidly expanded their nuclear and missile programs.
The 2015 nuclear agreement marked another round of appeasement of the regime whose consequences we have already witnessed.
One need not recall Neville Chamberlain’s experience. The clerical regime’s own history makes it abundantly clear that the policy of appeasement has always paved the way for war and terrorism.
And finally, I’d like to stress on this fundamental reality that the mullahs’ intransigent posture in international relations is just a hollow show of force. It would be an absolute mistake to think that the regime is engaging in such antics from a position of strength, as its lobbyists claim.
In reality, the mullahs do not have a reliable military force, and they lack popular support and a sound economic system.
At home, the mullahs derive their “power” from executing, torturing and suppressing the defenseless population. Abroad, they act with impunity because no one has challenged their warmongering and terrorism.
Of course, I must emphasize that overthrowing this regime is the sole responsibility of the Iranian people, the great army of liberation, the Resistance and Units of Rebellion. As Massoud Rajavi said, “No one except ourselves, our supporters and our people is supposed to bring us freedom and human rights.”
Appeasement, the flip side of the coin of hostility to Iranian Resistance
The policy of appeasement is the flip side of the coin of hostility towards the Iranian Resistance. Over the past four decades, this policy has not only enabled the mullahs to commit countless crimes and transgressions with impunity, but it has also emboldened and enabled them to take further actions.
The policy of appeasement has portrayed the mullahs’ empty rhetoric and warmongering as a reflection of their power.
The policy of appeasement has given the mullahs free rein to engage in misinformation and demonization campaigns against the Mojahedin and the Iranian Resistance, and to prevent the formation of a front against the mulflahs’ religious fascism, with the Iranian Resistance at its core.
And finally, this is a policy that has deliberately turned a blind eye to the de facto war the regime has been waging against other countries in the region.
I must emphasize that, even if prompted by economic interests, providing unsparing and unilateral support to the ruling theocracy, to the detriment of the people of Iran, is shortsighted, without a political equilibrium, and without a future. It helps a regime that from the outset declared that the domain of economics belongs to the animal kingdom!
The clerical regime is inherently destructive and has ruined the Iranian economy, bringing it to an impasse. Balanced economic relations that have a future and serve both the interest of the Iranian people and the world are only possible in an Iran that has been freed from the yoke of the mullahs.
Therefore, to those who want to give the mullahs more chances, we say:
You should not repeat the enormous damages already inflicted on the people of Iran and the region by making concessions to the mullahs again;
You cannot feign concern for war in order to assist a religious fascism that has perpetrated or been involved in the dirtiest wars in the region.
Anyone who partners with the regime to circumvent sanctions is complicit in preserving an inhumane dictatorship.
Imposing sanctions on the theocracy aids the people of Iran in their struggle against this dictatorship.
Blacklisting the corrupt and vicious core of the regime, the Office of the Supreme Leader Khamenei, which took place after a three-decade delay, has been welcomed by the Iranian public. The blacklisting must be extended to the regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani.
The UN Security Council must declare that the clerical regime in Iran is a threat to global peace and security.
The dossier of human rights abuses and massacre of political prisoners in Iran must be referred to the UN Security Council and international tribunals.
We call on all countries to join the international front against the religious fascism.
The International community, and specifically the European Union, must recognize that resistance is the Iranian people’s right to establish the sovereignty of the people of Iran.
Expressing gratitude to supporters of freedom in Iran
Honorable friends of the Iranian Resistance,
For many long years, you have insisted on these positions.
You have supported the true solution, resistance for freedom and democracy.
You rushed to the aid of freedom fighters when they were under a blockade in Ashraf and Liberty.
Today, you can see the fruits of your tireless labor here, in the united and determined ranks of motivated women and men who have devoted their entire lives to Iran’s freedom. Their ranks have already reached Tehran and most other cities across the country.
Today, the blossoming of Ashraf 3, and tomorrow a free Iran, will attest to the righteousness of your stance.
Hail to all of you,
Hail to freedom
Hail to the people of Iran.
