SPEECH TO THE INTERNATIONAL LIBERTY ASSOCIATION

LONDON, 31 JANUARY 2026

Ladies and Gentlemen, friends of liberty,

I address you today at a moment of grave urgency for the people of Iran.

Over the past few weeks, the world has witnessed one of the most shocking and deliberate massacres of innocent protesters in modern history. Tens of thousands of Iranians, many of them young, many of them women, took to the streets demanding nothing more radical than dignity, freedom and a future. The response of the regime was bullets, gallows and terror. Thousands were killed in cold blood. Many more were maimed, blinded, tortured and dragged into prisons where due process does not exist, and mercy is unknown. This was not crowd-control, it was state murder.

The Islamic Republic believes it has crushed the uprising. It is wrong. What it has crushed forever is any lingering illusion of legitimacy. The ferocity of the repression has not restored authority. It has deepened the hatred of an entire nation. A regime that survives only through mass executions, mass arrests and digital blackouts is not stable. It is weak. And its survival, in the long run, is no longer sustainable. Sadly, it took the death of thousands of innocent protesters to motivate the EU, at long last, to blacklist the Revolutionary Guards – the IRGC – as a terrorist organisation; something we have been calling for over at least 3 decades. Now only the UK remains as the sole appeaser, still dithering over proscribing the IRGC, with the Home Office arguing pathetically that blacklisting an organ of state is too complex a matter to fast-track.

The Iranian people know tyranny when they see it. They endured the autocracy of the Shah. They have suffered even longer under the theocratic dictatorship of the mullahs. And today they are making something unmistakably clear. They want neither the crown nor the turban. They want a secular republic, one based on the rule of law, separation of religion and state, equality for women, and respect for fundamental human rights. The idea that Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, might somehow return to Tehran as Iran’s saviour is a fantasy that would be comic if it were not so dangerous.

Pahlavi has spent the last 47 years living a life of luxury in America on the back of the billions stolen from the Iranian people by his father. He has no political organisation in Iran. No underground network. No resistance units. No trade unions. No youth movement. No women’s movement. No workers’ committees. No student organisations. No strike committees. No revolutionary infrastructure of any kind.

He’s not leading anything. He’s commentating from California. He has openly said that if he were “restored” to power, he would not even move his family back to Iran. He boasted last year that he would retain the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the killing machine currently gunning down protesters, to maintain “order” after the fall of the regime, which was the political equivalent of Churchill promising to keep the Gestapo to run Germany after Hitler. But now that the EU has blacklisted the IRGC, Pahlavi is claiming that he had always urged them to do so. Yet sadly, this Clown Prince is treated by Western journalists as if he were a government-in-waiting, despite the absurdity of his statements.

Ladies & Gentlemen, this is why the work of the International Liberty Association is so vital. International advocacy and supporter commitment provide the vital scrutiny needed to prevent the imminent execution of thousands of detainees. Your voice remains a critical “light in the darkness” for those demanding a free, secular, and democratic republic. Your commitment to documenting abuses, defending political prisoners and amplifying silenced voices is not abstract or academic. It saves lives. But your role goes beyond that. You help carry the voice of the Iranian people beyond prison walls and censorship, into parliaments, courts and international institutions. You remind the world that silence is not neutrality, it is complicity.

The international community can no longer plead ignorance. The facts are known. The graves are fresh. History will judge not only the perpetrators of these crimes, but those who looked away. The Iranian people have shown extraordinary courage. The brave Resistance Units have been operating in more than 220 cities across Iran. They are paying a terrible price for demanding the freedoms we too often take for granted. They deserve solidarity, protection and action, not empty statements.

The struggle for liberty in Iran is far from over. But with organisations like yours standing firm, the voices of the oppressed will not be extinguished, and the hope of a free, secular and democratic Iran will endure.

Thank you.