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Remarks by Italian MP Emanuele Pozzolo at the Free Iran 2024 World Summit – Day 2

Iran Freedom

Italian MP Emanuele Pozzolo

On June 30, 2024,  at the Free Iran 2024 World Summit – Day 2 hosted at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) headquarters in Paris, Emanuele Pozzolo, an Italian Member of Parliament, delivered a passionate speech. The Italian MP emphasized that the Iranian regime’s downfall is inevitable but must be followed by a clear and strong alternative. He expressed unwavering support for Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan, which outlines the future of a free and democratic Iran.

A translated version of Emanuele Pozzolo’s speech follows:

And a special thanks to Mrs. Rajavi. It is always an honor and a pleasure to be here with you, to try to show our sincere and genuine support for your battles. Battles that I have already mentioned elsewhere, in Ashraf 3, in Paris last year, in Brussels. Battles that I, like many of the distinguished guests here today, genuinely and sincerely share.

Today, I wanted to share a very simple reflection with you. I listened carefully to yesterday’s speeches, starting with Mrs. Rajavi’s speech, and those of the distinguished guests and colleagues who preceded me. In the end, a symbol, almost a symbolic word for the regime currently tyrannizing Iran, came to mind. And that word is “bullies.” Bullies are ruling in Tehran, and many times in our lives we have encountered a bully on our path, someone who wants silence and obedience from us. In most cases, we must admit that a sarcastic smile is enough to scare the bully away. Unfortunately, sometimes bullies team up, become a system, gain power, and become a state. That’s what has happened in Iran in recent decades, a government of bullies tyrannizing that country.

These bullies are very dangerous, not street-level bullies, but ones who use two main tools to stay in power because they are incapable of governing a significant and rich state like Iran. They are incompetent but have managed to stay in power for a long time. Now the bell is tolling for them. They use two tools to maintain power: internal terror, which we have all seen and do not need to further prove.

Thousands of people persecuted, thousands of women, girls, and boys oppressed, if not killed, their lives destroyed in the name of precepts that those imposing them do not respect. This is a genuine disgrace in modern Iran.

On one hand, internal terror is the first tool they use; on the other hand, international terrorism is the second. And if someone hasn’t understood this, certainly not among those present, or rather, if someone hadn’t understood it yet, they could, I believe, have definitively grasped it, hopefully, on October 7, 2023, when Iran launched a truly insane operation using the Palestinian people, sending them to the slaughter for the specific purpose of further escalating tensions in an already volatile Middle East. Iran clearly signed off on this with Hezbollah and continues to do so with daily delirious proclamations, solely to keep their crumbling power in Tehran clinging on through wars and Middle Eastern chaos. They think they can still fool the Iranian people for long. They haven’t succeeded so far and never will.

Italian MP Emanuele Pozzolo

In fact, these are crucial moments, in my opinion. Because after October 7, 2023, the whole world has understood that the Iranian issue is not a regional matter but a global one. We are not discussing just another geopolitical challenge but the heart of global geopolitical challenges. If we don’t understand this, and I believe those here do, we risk understanding nothing about what is happening in the world. Therefore, we face the main challenge.

To use a metaphor, with the utmost respect, for a symbolic image, a soccer metaphor: I know Iranians love soccer like Italians do, although we Italians haven’t been very lucky with soccer lately. Imagine a soccer match with two teams: one of resignation and fear, and the other of firmness and courage. I want to wear the jersey of firmness and courage, not resignation and fear. We wear the jersey of courage and firmness against a weaker team, weak from the start. The victory is clear, but we must be careful not to score an own goal.

Italian MP Emanuele Pozzolo

We, playing on the team of firmness and courage, and I address mainly the Westerners, must avoid own goals. One example of an own goal is the release of Hamid Nouri by a Western state that freed a criminal recognized by its courts in the name of what? That is an own goal we cannot afford, or a certain victory becomes distant. I am convinced we won’t make such mistakes again, and that the West, Europe, and the world will no longer commit such foolish own goals.

I believe that alongside a West that sometimes struggles to understand and has made many mistakes in its relations with certain world areas and, partly, with the Iranian Resistance, we know there is one issue we must continuously insist on. We do not wish for the collapse of a bloodthirsty, dictatorial, terrorist regime like the one governing Tehran today without having a plan for afterward. This would be a grave error. We know with certainty, indeed with granite certainty, that there is only one real alternative: the Ten-Point Plan of Maryam Rajavi.

We will always stand with her, with our Iranian patriots, and with you, until a conference like this, hopefully very soon, can be held together in Tehran, if you invite us.

Thank you.

 

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