On June 29, 2024, at the Free Iran 2024 World Summit hosted at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) headquarters in Paris, former Canadian PM Stephen Harper addressed attendees.
2. Stephen Harper delivered a powerful address criticizing the Iranian regime and Western policies of appeasement. #MaryamRajavi4FreeIran #FreeIran2024 #BerlinDemo29Junehttps://t.co/fvKPGUdSpU
— Iran Freedom (@4FreedominIran) June 29, 2024
The full text of Prime Minister Harper’s speech follows:
Friends, it’s great to be back here with you, it’s great to be back because it is great to be part of this movement in Iran, in France, in Germany, in Albania, all around the world. The movement that wants to see Iran finally become a free and democratic nation.
In this great objective, my friends, we join with the people of Iran, who are once again this year rejecting the regime by refusing to vote in huge numbers in its sham elections. This massive boycott is a deliberate and a collective act of civil disobedience.
In doing so, Iranians are signaling their rejection of the regime’s legitimacy and they are calling for its overthrow. You know, friends, the Ayatollah’s regime may repress people as severely as it can, but the people are not fooled. They are not fooled by the facade of its elections or the reality of its extremist anti-democratic ideology.
And friends, thank goodness the people of Iran understand this because it is clear that many in the international community, especially in the West, do not. Too many of them continue to reach out to Tehran to seek accommodation, even with its nuclear ambitions, and even after the events of October 7th, when the Mullah’s proxies launched the current war in the Middle East.
These people like to pretend that Iran has little or nothing to do with this war when it is in fact central to almost all the violence in the Middle East today as part of its strategy of exporting its feudal ideology. Friends, the stance of these Western governments is truly baffling. The current US administration, for example, started out by wanting regime change in Saudi Arabia. Now they want regime change in Israel. Well, the real way to promote peace, I tell them, is instead to help the vast majority of Iranians who want regime change in Iran. That’s the way to do it.
Friends, as we know, there are many millions of such people who want your country to be a free, constitutional, and democratic state. As I have said before, do not believe the propaganda of the regime, repeated, by the way, by so-called experts in Western capitals, that somehow the Ayatollah’s regime is well entrenched, and that the alternative to it is somehow chaos.
As I reminded you last year, in the late 1970s, these so-called same Western experts told us, even as late as late 1978, that the Shah’s regime was all-powerful and fully in control. Friends, Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime today is far weaker than the Shah’s was at that time because it is more brutal and more hated, it is more corrupt, and it is more dysfunctional.
My friends, what exactly, what exactly do these Western governments fear would happen if the Iranian regime collapsed? Do they really believe that what comes next could be worse than the status quo? How could it be worse than a theocratic state with an apocalyptic vision and a relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons, openly listing the countries it wants to wage war against? How could it be worse than a regime, at great expense, and at the suffering of its own people, that runs terrorism and war from Syria to Lebanon and from Iraq to Yemen, that is trying to sink ships in the Red Sea, that has started a war in Gaza, that is supporting a war against Ukraine and is attempting to start a war in Lebanon? How exactly could it get worse than that?
Friends, as I have said before, there is only one way to deal with this regime, and that is the way my government did. Not by softening sanctions, but by toughening them. Not by turning a blind eye to human rights violations, but by condemning them. Not by making excuses for the regime, but by declaring it a state sponsor of terrorism. And certainly not by engaging the regime, but by closing down its embassies all around the world.
Friends, the policy of appeasement, and that is exactly what it is in Western capitals, has only made the regime more aggressive and more determined in its pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities. And as long as that strategy is pursued, that strategy of appeasement, these things will only get worse. The alternative, we know, is to oppose the regime. Because the alternative to the regime is not chaos, it is this, Iran’s well-organized and democratic opposition. Friends, I am a signatory to an open letter, supported by over 75 presidents, former presidents and prime ministers around the world, that offers comprehensive policy recommendations to all governments on the question of Iran. It calls on them to reach out to this, the organized Iranian resistance.
The government of Iran is a global cancer, and the only cure is regime change by the Iranian people themselves in free and open elections. And in those elections, this organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, will be ready to put forth a fully viable alternative. It’s one with long-standing organization and deep social roots. It has an active network inside and outside of Iran and capable leadership. Its plans are based on clear principles, things that it has advocated tirelessly for many years. A commitment to free elections, the rejection of the present and past forms of dictatorship, freedom of assembly and expression, pluralism and the rule of law, human rights and gender equality, the separation of religion and state, the acceptance of Iran’s religious and ethnic diversity, and most importantly, for the international community, a non-nuclear state at peace with the world.
That is your vision, and it is a vision worth fighting for. It is the vision that Iran wants. It is the vision that the world needs.
So, my friends, keep looking forward. Keep looking beyond the oppressors in Tehran today and the appeasers in other capitals who help keep them there. Instead, keep your sights focused on that promising future that you have conceived, that millions in Iran and around the world fervently wish to come into being. You can make it happen. In Iran, you can make it happen for Iran, for its neighbors, and for the world. So, keep the faith, and keep up the fight, and thank you for having me once again.
Thank you very much.
