The world’s quarrel is with Iran’s mullahs, not its people

Free Iran is right In the last year since we gathered here, I think it’s fair to say that we are grateful for what’s happened. In a sense, we’re in an entirely new and better place. And just so that everybody understands who I mean when I say we are in a better place, I mean everybody who wants to see regime change in Iran in general, and the MEK in particular.

The most immediate source of our gratitude is that our good friends who were trapped in a camp that was ironically named Liberty are now out of danger. And that happened thanks to the courage and the hospitality of the Albanian nation and the Albanian people, to whom we are and will remain eternally grateful.

In May, the United States and the Arab states in the Middle East held a historic summit meeting in Riyadh, where the United States joined many others in abandoning the policy of hallucinating goodwill in the Iranian regime, and where it recognized in the words of President Trump that the Iranian regime’s longest-suffering victims are its own people.

Although we’re in a better place, I think it’s no exaggeration to say that now comes the hard part. Now comes the part where other countries must combine to delegitimize the Iranian regime, to isolate it internationally, to designate the IRGC as what it is, a terrorist organization. And to take other steps that will bring about the pressure, both from inside and from outside Iran, to get rid of the mullahs.

The best way for both Iranians and non-Iranians to do that is to align with the Iranian resistance, so as to make it clear to the oppressed citizens of Iran that the world’s quarrel is not with Iran but with the mullahs who have subjugated Iran. The PMOI members within Iran have provided both an example and a tool with their daring publicity campaign within Iran, urging regime change, and posting photos of Mrs. Rajavi and slogans opposing the clerical regime. They’ve been writing slogans on walls to support this gathering. It’s up to us to ensure that the energy behind that effort remains focused on the goal of regime change.

Now that Arab states, including the premier Sunni state of Saudi Arabia, are focused on the danger from Iran — even to the point of two years in a row having sent a representative of the royal family to this gathering — we must join together with them and with the entire civilized world in changing the uncivilized regime in Iran and in Tehran. We now have governments in power in both the United States and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are willing to do it. Thank you very much.

• Former U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey served as U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush. This excerpt is from remarks he gave at the July 1 rally in Paris.