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Former UK Minister David Jones Calls for Bold Action on Iran at Paris Conference

Former UK Minister David Jones

On January 11, 2025, David Jones, former UK Minister and a dedicated advocate for Iranian freedom, addressed an international conference in Paris, urging a significant shift in Western policy toward Iran.

Jones highlighted the regime’s vulnerabilities following the collapse of its ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria. He noted Tehran’s waning regional influence and the growing resolve of the Iranian people to challenge the regime’s authority. Commending the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its President-elect Maryam Rajavi, Jones lauded their unwavering dedication to achieving democratic change in Iran.

“The Iranian Resistance seeks neither foreign financial aid nor military intervention but demands recognition of the Iranian people’s right to regime change,” Jones declared. He called on the international community to reject policies of appeasement and support the NCRI’s vision for a secular and democratic Iran.

The full text of David Jones’ speech follows:

Mrs. Rajavi, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, friends, it’s a huge pleasure to be here today amongst so many distinguished colleagues from both sides, of the Atlantic. And greetings to my many friends in Ahsraf 3, it’s good to see you there in such strong numbers. As we gather here today in the early days of 2025, I believe that we have good reason to look forward with hope and optimism to the year ahead.

For the best part of the last 20 years, I’ve taken a keen interest in the affairs of Iran. I’ve watched with dismay the oppressive, aggressive posture struck by the regime in Tehran and the impact that that has had upon the brave Iranian people. The progressive deterioration in human rights that they have endured.

I was for many years, the chairman of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran freedom, and I was proud to be one of the claimants in the action in the European Court of Justice which resulted in the deprescription of the PMOI not only in Europe but also in the United Kingdom and in the United States. And as other speakers have already said, it’s a great shame that that deprescription has not been followed by the prescription of the IRGC.

Now, I fully understand that anyone who does observe events in Iran might be forgiven for surrendering to despondency about his future, but I tell you that I am today more optimistic about the future of Iran than I have been over that 20-year period.

Colleagues, consider the events of last year, of last month December 2024, which witnessed the overthrow of Bashar al Assad in Syria. That was a huge loss to the regime in Tehran. Indeed, I believe it was a pivotal loss.

For many years, Assad’s Syria was an essential element. Indeed, I would suggest the linchpin of the malign influence that Iran has sought to exert over the entire Middle Eastern region. Syria provided a direct corridor from Iran to the Mediterranean. It enabled Tehran to continue to support its other proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and also to maintain its own military presence in Syria.

Between 2012 and 2020, Tehran channeled at least 50 billion United States dollars into the civil conflict in Syria together with injecting large investments in military infrastructure, demographic engineering, and religious projects. Maintaining such an influence in Syria came at a huge cost to Iran itself and to the Iranian people. It drained its economy and incurred huge human costs.

But despite that cost, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, proved incapable of sustaining its intervention in Syria and it rapidly collapsed last month in the face of a rebellion that took it seemingly by surprise.

But let’s be clear that the failure of the IRGC in Syria should send a strong and encouraging message to those within Iran who want to see a restoration of normal democratic institutions because the message is this, even a large and heavily armed and well-funded autocracy can’t sustain a large scale revolt by those within the civil population who wish to be rid of it.

Last month’s events have shown Tehran to be highly vulnerable. The last few weeks have seen it stripped of its proxy in Syria with diminished influence in Lebanon and Yemen, but these events are simply the latest reverses for the regime in a crisis that has been considered continuing for a considerable time.

Over the last six years, as we’ve heard today, there have been four large-scale uprisings in Iran and a great number of continuing protests within the country by people who are angry at the economic mismanagement, rampant inflation, appalling unemployment levels, and the systemic corruption that are endemic within the country.

And the death in May last year of Ebrahim Raisi was a huge blow to the Supreme Leader who’d invested so much in him to secure the regime’s continuation.

The response of the regime to the increasing civil unrest follows the customary pattern of heavy-handed brutality. During 2024, as we have already heard, there were almost 1,000 recorded executions, in Iran. 700 of those followed, the election to the presidency of Masoud Pezeshkian, who I remind you was supposed to be the moderate candidate in that electoral process.

But despite the brutality of the regime’s response, the failure of the IRGC in Syria and Iran’s diminished influence within the region have simply emboldened the brave Iranian people. It’s clear that those uprisings in Iran are going to continue. The Resistance Units and the general populace are fully determined to continue to challenge the regime’s grip on power within Iran.

The Iranian Resistance has a unique approach. It doesn’t seek financial or military support from any other country. Indeed, you Mrs. Rajavi have repeatedly said that the overthrow of the regime will only occur and will only be achieved by the Iranian people themselves and by the organized Iranian Resistance.

All that the Resistance seeks from the international community is the simple recognition of the right of the Iranian people, if that is indeed their will, to remove the regime and combat its repressive forces specifically the IRGC.

So, really the ball is in the court of the international community. Its policy towards Iran must shift decisively. As we’ve heard already, appeasement has failed. For decades now, attempts to deter Iran from its disruptive conduct through sanctions diplomacy and appeasement have signally failed.

Indeed, if anything, the regime’s ambitions, including its nuclear ambitions, have become ever more strident. So the demands of the Iranian people for regime change are entirely understandable and they should be met with support from the international community, and con consider the aims of the NCRI.

They include establishing a pluralistic and non-nuclear republic in in Iran, ensuring equality for women, minorities, and religious groups, and separating religion from the state, and prioritizing peace and regional stability.

Aren’t those objectives entirely praiseworthy? Wouldn’t their achievement be infinitely superior to the state of affairs that currently prevails in Iran? Aren’t they objectives that the international community should not be supporting but actively promoting?

And put quite simply, if those aims were realized, wouldn’t they establish within Iran the state of affairs that every Western liberal democracy simply takes for granted?

So, the Western world should now recognize and actively support the legitimacy of the ambitions of the Iranian people to replace the repressive regime in Tehran with something that reflects the ambitions of the organized resistance.

Peace in the region, indeed peace in the wider world, demands a stable, secular, democratic Iran, and that is what the West should be seeking.

And colleagues, lending Western support to the Resistance in its efforts to achieve those ambitions will help realize what should be the aim of every democrat here and outside. A stable, free, democratic Iran in 2025.

Thank you.

 

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Former UK Minister David Jones Calls for Bold Action on Iran at Paris Conference