On the brink of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, an online international summit, entitled “Trans-Atlantic Summit on Iran Policy, Time to Hold the Iranian Regime Accountable,” brought together Iranians in various countries around the world from 10,000 locations.

Among the personalities who addressed the summit were 30 bipartisan U.S. lawmakers from the House and the Senate, including Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Roy Blunt, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Bob Menendez, and dignitaries like Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor, General James Jones, National Security Advisor to President Obama (2009-2010), Newt Gingrich, 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Joseph Lieberman, former U.S. Senator, as well as a delegation of U.K. lawmakers, and Amb. Giulio Terzi, former Foreign Minister of Italy.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the keynote speaker of the summit, paid tribute to Navid Afkari, a rebellious national hero recently executed by the regime and said: “Faced with executions and massacres, the people of Iran urge the United Nations, and the U.N. Security Council, in particular, to restore snapback sanctions stipulated in the six U.N. resolutions against the clerical regime in Iran. Otherwise, Khamenei will continue to ravage the nation as his regime’s survival depends on murder and suppression. If Khamenei were to stop executions, he would lose control of the situation, and uprisings simmering in the depths of Iranian society would erupt and overthrow the mullahs’ religious fascism.”

Speakers in the summit demanded justice for over 30,000 MEK and other activists, political prisoners massacred in 1988. They urged an end to the policy of appeasement and demanded those who ordered and carried out this great crime, who currently occupy high positions in the regime, to be brought to justice.
Kelly Ayotte, former U.S. Senator joined to the summit. In her remarks, Senator Ayotte said, “The Iranian people deserve the right to live in prosperity, to have basic human rights. And I again want to thank Mrs. Rajavi and members of the NCRI and the MEK for your fight for freedom.”

Kelly Ayotte, former U.S. Senator

I am deeply honored to follow my friend and mentor, Senator Joe Lieberman. And certainly Trish, coming from New Hampshire, we’re so proud of you and everything that you’ve done.

Madame Rajavi, and the members of the Iranian American community, we join you today, and we join you to tell you that we are for freedom. We are for freedom for the Iranian people. It is well past the time that the Iranian people should be able to elect their own representatives and have a government that protects their health, their safety and their basic human rights. The mullahs must go. I think you heard that from every single speaker today on both sides of the aisle. In Washington, that is the view.

And we know there is an alternative. Mrs. Rajavi and the NCRI, your ten-point plan presents a great alternative for the Iranian people, one that envisions a peaceful, democratic country and a future based on universal suffrage, gender equality, freedom of speech, separation of religion and state, and of course a non-nuclear Iran.

We are at an important juncture, just like many other speakers have said today. We know the Iranian people want peace. They do not want their government to continue to support the terrorism and violence that it has supported around the world. And the Iranian government, the mullahs, have allowed the people of Iran to suffer, and they’ve spent the people’s money on instead of food, instead of healthcare during this COVID crisis, they’ve spent it on weapons, weapons. They’ve spent billions on terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad, the murderous Assad regime murdering innocent people. And they have been part of all of it. The regime has plotted terrorist attacks around the world. Terrorist attacks in Germany, Belgium, Africa, Southeast Asia, and even in America. Let us not forget when Iran plotted to murder the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil. And most recently [0:03:26] for Iran to murder the U.S. ambassador to South America.

But we know that most of all, the Iranian people have suffered the most. And our hearts go out to them. Tens of thousands of Iranians have been murdered by the mullahs and this illegitimate regime. As others have mentioned, Amnesty International just came out with a recent report that talks about how the IRGC, the arm of the mullahs, actually tortured children as young as ten years old. And tortured those Iranians that had the audacity, and frankly from our perspective the courage, to go to the streets to stand up for their rights and to protest this regime. And as so many others have mentioned, the example of their barbarity is the recent execution of the heroic wrestler, and our hearts go out to his family and the Iranian people who have suffered so much.

And as we think about all this now, despite the reign of the mullahs, of terror inside Iran and outside Iran, there are those in the international community that are actually poised to give Iran relief from the arms embargo that has been in place for many years. This regime should not be rewarded for its evil behavior. It is very important that that arms embargo remain in place. If other nations, particularly European nations, do not join the U.S. in supporting snapback of sanctions and making sure that this arms embargo stays in place, they will regret it when they see the harm that Iran will do by being able to freely get access to Chinese and Russian arms and from other governments around the world that want to foment terror.

Iran has asked for sanctions relief from the JCPOA, yet Iran doesn’t comply with the JCPOA. I agree with the other speakers, I thought the JCPOA was deeply flawed. But our European friends can’t hide behind the JCPOA to say that Iran should not be sanctioned when Iran is not even complying with the JCPOA. In fact, a recent report came out that showed from the nuclear inspectors that Iran in fact is enriching uranium that it should not be under the JCPOA, that Iran is actually thwarting the nuclear inspectors. So why would any country now reward Iran’s bad behavior? Not only its abuses to its people, its support of terrorism, but its actual violations of the agreement that it said it would enter and that other countries entered in with it.

I support the Trump administration’s move, if other countries in the world do not support the extension of this arms embargo against Iran, with an executive order to penalize any country in the world that trades in arms with Iran. Sanctions should be implemented and I believe also that there is a bipartisan consensus in the U.S. Congress, so I hope that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle would back the administration up on this and pass legislation to say that any country that does business with Iran, if they are trading arms, if they want to give arms to Iran, should be sanctioned and shouldn’t be doing business in the United States of America. Now is the time to keep up the maximum pressure campaign on Iran.

We know as other speakers have said the mullahs are under tremendous pressure. The have been isolated. The world has seen their barbaric behavior. It is time for the world to come together, not just the United States—and I commend the Trump administration for the tough sanctions they have put on Iran—but our European friends need to face reality on this. Together we can make sure that there is peace and freedom in Iran.

The Iranian people deserve the right to live in prosperity, to have basic human rights. And I again want to thank Mrs. Rajavi and members of the NCRI and the MEK for your fight for freedom. We stand with you. And we ask with the UN meeting that the members of the world stand with you as well. Thank you.