NCRI ONLINE CONFERENCE

Thursday 16 January 2025

12.00-13.00 GMT

Iran: Time For Change – Policy Options? 

The Iranian regime is at its weakest point since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini hijacked the 1979 revolution to seize power. Their Shi’ite axis of resistance in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon has crumbled, with the decapitation of Hamas and Hezbollah and the fall of the brutal Assad regime. Even Vladimir Putin was unable to save their mutual friend and ally – Bashar al-Assad – from overthrow. Now they face the daunting prospect of another four years with Donald Trump in charge in America. He will hold the mullahs to account. He has appointed General Keith Kellogg, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, as his envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Addressing an NCRI conference in Paris last Saturday, General Kelloggsaid: “For the United States, a policy of maximum pressure must be reinstated, and it must be reinstated with the help of the rest of the globe, and that includes standing with the Iranian people and their aspirations for democracy.” He said that for the Iranian people “2025 is the year for Hope, Action and Change”.

General Kellogg, who is close to President Trump, was one of many distinguished former prime ministers, ministers, diplomats and generals who gathered in Paris to speak in support of the main democratic opposition to the mullahs’ theocratic regime and to show their support for the charismatic and courageous leadership of Mrs Maryam Rajavi. The mullahs’ predictable reaction to the Paris conference was absolute hysteria. They even summoned the French ambassador to remonstrate with him for allowing the conference to take place. This is the best possible indication of the success of the conference and the disintegrating weakness of the theocratic regime.

Many of the speakers in Paris highlighted the failure of decades of appeasement by Western powers. Even now, there is an emerging narrative that the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad’s departure has so weakened the Iranian regime that the West must seize the opportunity to negotiate with the so called ‘moderate’ president Masoud Pezeshkian to abandon his country’s nuclear ambitions and restore peace and harmony to the Middle East. How utterly foolish. Pezeshkian is no moderate. He is a puppet of the sociopathic Supreme Leader Khamenei and carries out his orders blindly. Since taking office in August 2024, he has presided over the execution of more than 748 people, including dozens of women.

Western appeasers need to wake up. They need to understand that there is an organized resistance inside the country, capable of overthrowing the regime. MEK Resistance Units are burgeoning in towns and cities across Iran. We need to show our support for these brave freedom fighters. They don’t want outside interference or military intervention, they simply want Western powers to acknowledge their right to fight the IRGC and to overthrow this despotic regime and to restore freedom, justice, democracy, and to end repression, misogyny, torture, executions, the nuclear threat, terrorism and warmongering. Western appeasers have to realise that there is a credible, alternative with a clear roadmap for democratic transition, led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi’s and her Ten-Point Plan. Western leaders must recognize the significance of Ashraf 3 as a bastion of hope and inspiration for the Iranian people.

The fundamentalist, theocratic regime is on its last legs. The Iranian currency, the rial, is in freefall. Unemployment, particularly for the young, is out of control. There is appalling poverty. Tens of billions have been squandered on international terrorism and warmongering. Billions more is being invested in building nuclear weapons. The corruption of the mullahs and their IRGC acolytes has seen billions more stolen from the Iranian people to finance their personal wealth. A day of reckoning beckons for the theocratic regime. There is a bubbling cauldron of resentment and frustration at the decades of wastage and ineptitude, reinforced by a populace fed up with oppression, misogyny, barbarism and tyranny.

As a gangster regime, the theocratic dictatorship has no equal. Western powers must accept that the time for appeasement has ended. The EU must follow America and Canada’s example and blacklist the IRGC. We must close Iran’s embassies, which they use as terrorist hubs and send their diplomats back to Tehran. It is time for the civilized world to back the Iranian people and their right to overthrow this despotic and repressive regime.