During a great rally held in New York on September 19, 2023, US Senator Robert Torricelli delivered a speech. The rally was held outside the UN in support of uprisings for a democratic republic in Iran and in condemnation of the Iranian regime and its president, Ebrahim Raisi, during the session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The text of Senator Robert Torricelli’s speech follows:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
It is an honor to be with all of you today and to Maryam Rajavi, who I know is listening from Europe, our respect to you today and our gratitude for your unflinching leadership in bringing down this regime. Mrs. Rajavi, thank you.
I know, as I look at all of you today, gathered here, I see your faces and I hear your voices, but I know behind every one of you is someone you loved who was martyred, someone you care about who was jailed, someone important to you tortured. I see your faces in the hundreds, but I know behind you there are thousands. You honor their memories. You honor their lives. I am honored to be with you for the kind of people that you are. Thank you for being here. On behalf of all of them, thank you for being here.
In a few hours, Raisi will stand before the diplomats of the world in the building behind me. It’s important that diplomats from Africa and Asia and Europe and Latin America know who’s speaking with them today. The voice you will hear from the president of Iran is the same voice that ordered the deaths of thousands and thousands of young people in hundreds of towns and villages across Iran in the last year. It was his voice that ordered their murders. It is his voice that brought their deaths. Understand who Raisi is and who it is who speaks with you today. He is a murderer.
When Raisi walks to the podium today and shakes the hands of the leaders of the United Nations, understand that the hand that he stretches out has the blood on it of tens of thousands of martyrs from the genocide of 1988. It was his hand that ordered the deaths of the martyrs. That’s who shakes your hands today when he rises to speak. He is a murderer. His hands have blood on them.
Raisi, understand this. You can enjoy today all the honors and the pomp and the circumstance. You can believe you’re a legitimate leader. You can believe in your heart that you belong in the United Nations. But understand this: Your future is the future of Gaddafi. Your future is the future of Idi Amin. Your fate is the fate of Saddam. You have a rendezvous with the ambitions of the Iranian people, and your death is a dishonorable death in the hands and the streets of the people of Iran. That, Raisi, is your future.
So today, to the diplomats of the United Nations, we remind you of this: Raisi may stand there, but the people of Iran stand here. But the people of Iran want is not what he will speak to. What they want is a country that is democratic, chooses its own leaders, where they can exercise religious freedom, where they can speak freely in a non-nuclear Iran, at peace with its neighbors and reconciled with the world. Not a pariah state, but a state in the true traditions of the Persian people, of a great culture, a great land of prosperity and of peace and of freedom. Not Raisi’s Iran, our Iran, the Iran of Madam Rajavi, the Ten-Point Plan, a democratic and free Iran. You can listen to him, but the voice of Iran is here with us. We are the future!
And so to all of you, to all of you, thank you for remembering the loved ones you left behind. Thank you for not giving up on Iran. The future will be determined by those young people taking to the streets. You can beat them down. You can jail them. You can even kill them. But the future is inevitable. This will triumph. He will fail. He will be accountable. And the future will belong to those who stand with us.
To all of you, thank you for never giving up. Thank you for never giving in. We will be here with you till the end. An end we can feel. It is in our hands. Thank you all and God bless you.
