Maryam Rajavi’s message to the Iran Freedom Convention in the US-May 5, 2018

Website of Maryam Rajavi, leader of Iran’s opposition, reported on her recent remarks to the Iran Freedom Convention in Washington D.C. held on May 5, 2018. The convention included delegates representing Iranian communities, youth, and women, as well as a number of dignitaries and officials from the U.S.

Mrs. Rajavi’s remarks came in the form of a video message, in which she reaffirmed the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s (NCRI, of which the MEK is a member) position on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Her speech included a seven-point summary of the correct policy toward Iran, as well as comments on the ongoing uprising in Iran.

Mrs. Rajavi’s seven-point policy reflects the position of the NCRI toward the Iranian regime. Her points are summarized below:

1. The people of Iran want to overthrow the clerical regime and have participated in hundreds of protests for regime change since last December. They ask for the support of the international community, particularly the West, in this endeavor.
2. The NCRI calls on the international community to take a stand against the repressive Iranian regime and not to be silent in the face of its crimes, including its record of the highest per capita executions in the world. World leaders are called upon to take punitive measures against the regime to compel the mullahs to release those arrested for protesting, including “hundreds of our Arab compatriots in Khuzestan Province and a large number of Kurds in western Iran, and to end the barbaric persecution of farmers in Isfahan.”
3. Western leaders have recently acknowledged the flaws in the Iran nuclear deal, which the Iranian resistance (which includes the MEK) opposed from its inception. Mrs. Rajavi spoke out against the JCPOA on the day it was signed, on July 14, 2015, saying that the deal had given “unwarranted concessions to the mullahs’ regime.” She further stated that “evicting the regime from the Middle East and preventing its regional meddling… is a fundamental principle that needs to be included in any agreement.” Mrs. Rajavi also said that the billions of dollars given to the regime as part of the deal should be subject to monitoring by the United Nations to ensure that the funds would go toward the urgent needs of the Iranian people. Otherwise, the money would be spent furthering the regime’s “policy of export of terrorism and fundamentalism in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.”
4. The regime has used the concessions granted by the JCPOA to suppress the voice of its people and to massacre the people of Syria. As such, she called on the West to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program in its entirety and to conduct unconditional inspections to ensure that the regime engages in no further nuclear activities.
5. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the Iranian opposition, emphasized that the issues with regard to Iran extend beyond its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. She highlighted that any policy toward Iran should also include the expulsion of the Revolutionary Guard from countries in the region and the end of the regime’s practices of torturing and executing its citizens.
6. The regime, particularly the Revolutionary Guard, should be cut off from the international banking system in order to prevent further illegal activities by the theocracy.
7. The NCRI must be recognized as the democratic alternative to the ruling regime to make up for the policies of appeasement toward the mullahs that have prolonged their reign of terror.

Mrs. Rajavi ended her speech by calling on supporters of the resistance to rise up and expand the uprising, “by neutralizing the lobby and proponents of the religious dictatorship, and by stepping up [their] activities to convey the cries of the Iranian people to the peoples of the world.”

Staff Writer