NCRI ‘World Day Against the Death Penalty’ Conference, Church House, Dean’s Yard, Westminster, London

Recorded Video Speech

14.30 hrs Saturday 11^th October 2025

Ladies & Gentlemen,

It is my privilege to address you today and I only regret that I cannot be with you in person.

The rapidly escalating crisis in Iran has echoes right back to the earliest days of the fundamentalist Islamic Republic. Following the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini hi-jacked the popular revolution and laid the foundations for his own vicious tyranny. The Iranian people soon realized the pitfall of swapping the savage autocracy of the Shah, for the cruel, fundamentalist oppression of the mullahs. They realized they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

From that day to the present, the regime’s executioners began their diligent work, torturing and executing thousands including more than 30,000 political prisoners during the infamous 1988 massacre, described in a report last year by the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran as a crime against humanity and genocide. The number of executions in Iran has now reached record-levels under Masoud Pezeshkian, the so-called “moderate” president. In the past 14 months, 1,850 people, including 59 women and multiple political prisoners have been tortured and hanged.

Today, the mullahs’ theocratic regime teeters on the edge of the precipice. Their so-called ‘axis of resistance’ that included Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, has collapsed. In the 12-day war in June this year, Israel and America joined in a calculated assault on the regime’s nuclear sites. Dozens of Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) leaders and key nuclear scientists were eliminated.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s years of sponsoring international terrorism and warmongering, while trying to persuade the West that he was only enriching uranium for peaceful, civilian energy purposes, has spectacularly imploded.

The mullahs, enmeshed in corruption and incompetence, have squandered the nation’s wealth on funding terror and proxy militias. The Iranian economy now lies in ruins, strangled by mismanagement and the burden of sanctions. Billions have been wasted on the clandestine nuclear bomb and ballistic missile programme that is now a smouldering ruin. 90 million impoverished Iranians have lost their fear of the mullahs and their savagery.

The exponential rise of PMOI Resistance Units across the nation has demonstrated the courage of the opposition, daily spraying anti-regime graffiti on the walls of public buildings, firebombing IRGC and Basij compounds, displaying banners of NCRI leaders like Maryam Rajavi, and mounting cyberattacks on regime TV and radio communications. Placards declaring: “Down with the oppressor, be it the Shah or the mullahs”, are appearing regularly on the regime’s bridges and buildings across Iran.

Western appeasers must now end their tiresome calls for diplomacy and negotiation with the world’s most evil regime. The West must acknowledge the Iranian people’s right to overthrow the regime and establish a democratic republic, and recognise the right of protesters, young Iranians, and their Resistance Units to defend themselves against IRGC aggression.

We must recognise the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) as the viable democratic alternative and endorse Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan for a free, democratic, and secular republic. We must end impunity by referring the regime’s appalling human rights record to the UN Security Council for prosecution of those responsible for crimes against humanity in an international tribunal. We must impose targeted sanctions on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials responsible for crimes against humanity and apply universal jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants and prosecute perpetrators of these crimes.

And essentially, we must follow the example of America, Canada and Australia and proscribe the IRGC. Indeed, we must surely ask why the UK and EU have failed to do so already, when they directly threaten our security and the security of the broader international community.

Ladies & Gentlemen, the countdown to collapse is real. The cracks are widening. The pressure is mounting. The regime is rotting from within. The question is not if it will fall—it is when. And when that day comes, we must ensure that freedom, democracy, and justice rise in its place. So let us pledge today that we will stand on the side of truth, that we will stand on the side of justice, that we will stand on the side of the people of Iran.

STRUAN STEVENSON

Struan Stevenson is the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.