Thursday, March 30, 2023: Dr. Liam Fox, a former Defense Minister and British MP, showed his strong support for the Iranian people’s Resistance and uprising during his speech. He addressed members of the MEK at Ashraf-3 in Albania, where he condemned the toxic and economically devastating regime in Iran.
Dr. Fox emphasized the regime’s complicity in human rights abuses and crimes against humanity, as well as its disregard for human dignity and safety.
He also criticized the regime’s willingness to use hostage-taking as a tool of foreign policy. Dr. Fox expressed his admiration for the bravery of Iranian women in their struggle for freedom and urged Western countries to support the people of Iran in their fight for democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.
He stated that only the complete abandonment of the concept of Velayat-e faqih – which he described as an instrument for intellectual, religious, and political oppression—could ever allow the people of Iran to have the freedom of expression and self-determination they require.
A transcript of the speech by Dr. Liam Fox at the Meeting of the Ashraf-3 is as follows:
I believe that the regime in Iran is one of the most toxic in the world. I believe it is rotten to the core by almost any measure that a civilized world would bring.
I often talk about what I call the world’s thugocracies, criminal regimes that simply have no regard for either the rule of law or the basic rules of humanity. Iran is worse than a thugocracy. The thugs of the IRGC run it, but the obscene theocracy of the mullahs oversees it. It makes it a more dangerous nation in terms of its regime than most. Economically, it has brought nothing but hardship to the people of Iran, poverty at levels never known before, unemployment, inflation, under-standard of living the people in Iran today do not deserve.
The entire concept of the Velayat-e faqih is not a noble religious quest but a viable instrument for intellectual, religious, and political oppression. And only its complete abandonment can ever allow the people of Iran to have the freedom of expression and self-determination that they require. Nothing else will do.
There is no respect for human dignity and no respect for human safety for the tens of thousands who have been murdered by the regime, imprisoned by the regime, and tortured by the regime. This is a regime that is willing to use human hostage-taking of foreign nationals as a tool of its foreign policy. I think it is to be hugely regretted that some countries, most notably Belgium, recently have effectively been willing to sign agreements that will be no more than a road map to future hostage-taking, whether for their own citizens or others.
And I think that all of us in Western politics need to stand up to this abhorrent practice and make it very clear that we cannot be blackmailed by a regime with no moral authority.
Having seen widespread human rights abuses at home, Iran is complicit in the human rights abuses, the crimes against humanity, and the war crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine by supplying Russia with the deadly means of continuing their illegal war. Today, I want to express a very special, very heartfelt thank you to the women of Iran.
At the heart of the battle for freedom in Iran are the women of Iran. We have watched enormous admiration in recent months for how that struggle continues today and the bravery of young and older women in Iran. To take on the might of the regime, knowing what the cost would be, is a real beacon to the rest of the world and tells us what the real battle is today in terms of women’s rights in our globe.
I have long been an opponent of the JCPOA, the international agreement with Iran, because, frankly, I don’t believe it’s worth the paper that it’s written on. It doesn’t deal with Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear weapon state, merely to delay it. And delaying a problem like that is no real advantage. It does not deal with Iran’s ballistic weapons issue. It does not deal with the regime’s determination to destabilize its neighbors in the region, and it does nothing to stop its support for terrorism in other parts of the world, including mine.
In the Arab Spring, Western countries were seemingly willing to support the Arab uprising. But in 2009, the people of Iran, at the very least, needed moral support from the West. They did not receive it.
And I think that was a terrible black mark on the history of the free world because I don’t believe that the people of Iran, those who seek freedom, want our sympathy. They want our support. They want to know that we will be with them in the battle for the values that we already have, for the freedoms we already have in our own nations.
We should not rest until the people of Iran have the same freedom and liberty, democracy, and the ability to live under a rule of law that is secular and non-arbitrary.
