At a conference held on March 1 at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) headquarters, Struan Stevenson, a former Member of the European Parliament and President of the EP Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-2014), delivered a passionate address spotlighting the oppressive regime in Iran and its backing of terrorism.
Stevenson highlighted the regime’s evident frustration with the outcomes of a trial, widely regarded as unjust, targeting leaders of the Iranian Resistance. He suggested that this reaction underscores Tehran’s apprehension about the increasing international and domestic support for the MEK, prompting them to resort to oppressive tactics such as assassinations, bombings, and cyber attacks on opposition gatherings and offices.
Drawing attention to the regime’s involvement in violent activities, proxy wars, and human rights violations, Stevenson urged for global acknowledgment of the Iranian people’s right to resist oppression and dismantle the regime. He condemned the regime’s suppression of dissent and fraudulent elections, calling on Western nations to take concrete actions to hold Iran accountable for its violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
Stevenson also stressed the significance of designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization and closing down the regime’s embassies used to facilitate terrorism. His speech underscored the necessity for worldwide unity in fostering a more democratic and stable Iran, thus ensuring both regional security and global peace.
The full text of Mr. Struan Stevenson’s speech follows:
Madam Rajavi, Alejo, and Amparo, it’s such a pleasure to be here today and such a pleasure to see Alejo and Amparo with us. Alejo, a man of steel. Amparo, the Iron Lady. These are the real heroes of the resistance. Thank you so much.
You know, John F. Kennedy famously said, that those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. His words, I hope, are resonating today in Tehran.
For 45 years, the Iranian regime has sponsored violent abduction, hostage-taking, kidnapping, blackmail, piracy, assassination, warmongering, and oppression. It’s a gangster regime. And as a gangster criminal regime, it has no equal. They have ploughed men and resources into proxy wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza.
They have openly backed terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. And through the extraterritorial Quds Force of the IRGC, they have directed extremist operations throughout the Middle East and further afield. Even, as we know, sending registered diplomats on terror missions. Now they are supplying kamikaze drones to Russia for use in their illegal war in Ukraine.
The theocratic regime has excelled in the past four decades in barbaric acts, such as we heard Mrs. Rajavi mentioning in her presentation, the amputation of hands, gouging eyes, stoning people to death, throwing prisoners off cliffs, and other brutal punishments. This is what they call human rights in Iran today.
But the great surprise is that many countries in the West continue to negotiate with this criminal regime. We continue to treat it as if it’s some sort of bona fide nation. They seem to ignore the regime’s role in planning, financing, training, and arming the Hamas extremists from Gaza who attacked Israel on the 7th of October. They ignore the fact that the IRGC is behind the Yemen-based Houthi drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the attacks by Tehran’s proxies on American military bases in the region.
The theocratic regime uses gangsters and drug cartel godfathers to launder their drug money, helping the mullahs to overcome the impact of Western sanctions and providing the regime with the means to finance and supply its terrorist proxies.
With a collapsing economy and widespread poverty, repeated nationwide uprisings in Iran were marked by protesters demanding the overthrow of the regime with cries of death to the oppressor, be it the Sheikh or the Shah, indicating that they want democracy, not autocratic tyranny.
Their opposition has manifested itself in the shape of the NCRI and its main component party, the MEK, led by the extraordinary Mrs. Maryam Rajavi.
The mullahs now fear… and that’s why the mullahs now fear and loathe the MEK, who they see as the only viable and organized entity with the ability to topple their regime and to restore peace, justice, freedom, and democracy to the beleaguered Iranian people. Not content with having killed over 100,000 members and supporters of the MEK inside Iran, they’ve organized assassinations and bomb, arson, and cyber warfare attacks on NCRI rallies and even on NCRI offices abroad.
Now, in a last desperate bid, as we have heard in previous speeches, they have launched a bogus trial in absentia of 104 exiled members of the MEK in Tehran to lay the groundwork for more terrorism and in the hope that their sham convictions will convince Western democracies to place restrictions on the principal opposition.
Clearly, their aim is to sentence them all to death in order that this bogus extravaganza may somehow justify their subsequent murder. Indeed, it’s because of the success of the MEK in building formidable international and domestic support that the mullahs are now trembling in fear.
In a bid to quell another revolution that could sweep this regime from power, the aging and psychotic Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, engineered the sham election of Ebrahim Raisi as president and he is re-engineering that sham election right now today as we speak.
Raisi is known as the butcher of Tehran for his role as a key executioner in the death commissions that massacred over 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 in a crime against humanity.
Raisi, believe me, has lived up to his nickname. Over 1,780 people have been executed since he took office and 864 people were executed, were hanged last year alone, many of them dissidents arrested during the 2022 uprising.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Iranian people have had enough. Their fury has been channeled through the massive expansion of the resistance units of the MEK, which have burgeoned in every town and city in the country.
The international community must recognize the right of the Iranian people and their Resistance Units. They have the right to use all means at their disposal to resist the ruthless machinery of suppression and to overthrow the mullahs.
It must surely now have dawned on even the most ardent appeasers in the West that engaging with the Iranian regime is no longer viable. The path of appeasement has only emboldened Iran and allowed it to wreak havoc both regionally and globally.
This must surely also apply to Albania, where under pressure from the mullahs, with their threats of cyber-attacks and violence, an unwarranted and unprovoked raid was carried out on Ashraf 3, leading to the death of one Ashrafi who was pepper sprayed in the face.
The confiscated computers and communications equipment have still not been returned and internet access has been disabled. Albanian police still remain on duty at the entrance to Ashraf 3.
The rights of these refugees, as Mrs. Rajavi said, as stipulated in the 1951 Geneva Convention and the European Convention of Human Rights, those rights have to be respected and Western nations, especially the US, must support the Albanian government and encourage it to stand up to pressure from the Iranian regime.
As the clerical regime enters its final phase, it’s high time for the world to take concrete measures to hold it accountable for its egregious human rights violations and its crimes against humanity.
An important step is to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group and to shut down the embassies in Europe because they are a hub of planning for terrorist acts against dissidents. If we unite to do that, we can pave the way for a more stable and democratic Iran, eradicating the threat to regional security once and for all and making the whole world a safer place. Thank you.
