Thanks to you and particularly to the people who live here in Ashraf 3 you’ll be honored forever in Iranian history and in the history of those who love and are willing to die for freedom. God bless you.
This organization has grown and grown and grown, and I feel in this room today a kind of optimism that I don’t remember feeling before when we were in Paris. I feel an optimism maybe because you’ve done a miracle here in Ashraf. If we were to build this in New York City, it would take 15 years and 14 corruption investigations. I was here a year and a half ago; this wasn’t here. And of course, all of this is possible because of the leadership of Madame Maryam Rajavi, a truly exceptional leader. Just like her husband, Massoud Rajavi, who began this movement in one very brave act. He refused to swear allegiance to the Supreme Leader Khomeini to his face. He said, “No, I will not swear allegiance to you. I will not deliver my nation to a tyrant.”
I accuse the Ayatollah and Rouhani and all of their sycophants and followers of mass murder, crimes against humanity. We should be embarrassed for our countries if they haven’t stood up against this. There’s no middle ground here. These people have killed at least 120,000 members and associates of this great organization. You see the book. You go through the sad, tragic, but heroic exhibit they have of the martyrs to freedom. Look at the photograph of the people in the infirmary being treated for illness, slaughtered just a few years ago. Killed 52 of them of the last 100 people who stayed at Ashraf; they tried to wipe them all out. In 1988, in two months they slaughtered 30,000 people. These are not numbers, these are human lives.
So there are three things that we have to do. Number one, we have to get the governments of Europe to stand up, to wake up, to reclaim their dignity and their honor. These are the countries that gave us democracy. Greece, Rome, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Germany, all places in which freedom was born, democracy emerged. Democracy for my nation came out of the experience of Europe. So how can the leaders of those countries turn their back on mass murder? How can they do it and live with themselves? It’s time to end that shameful disregard.
There’s no statute of limitations on murder… I prosecuted two Nazis 40 years after their horrible deeds. One killed 20,000 people, the other killed 12,000 people, and we brought them to justice. The people who slaughtered 30,000 people in 1988 should be identified, prosecuted, and they should either be imprisoned for life or executed. They’re murderers. They’re not leaders of countries.
I am so proud of my government because we have stood up. We looked at that agreement that would make Iran a nuclear power and we said tear it up. We’re not going to put nuclear weapons in the hands of a maniac. Well, I say to the leaders of Europe, you can go down in history as fighters for freedom. Isn’t that better than just running a government and giving blood money to Iran? How can you do commerce with them? We all know they’re the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world. That means they fund and they supply murderers not only in their own country but all over the world. And when you give them money, when you relieve them of a debt, which my government did in the prior administration, you are supporting murder. What do they use it for? When a French or a German company does business with them, that profit is going to be used to kill people in Syria or to kill people somewhere else or to send people to Albania to kill us or to send people to France like they did last year to kill Madame Rajavi and us. That’s what they’re funding, don’t you realize it? That makes you complicit in murder.
Number two, let’s make it clear, there is an alternative to this horrible regime of terror. This isn’t one of those situations in which we have the choice of deposing a horrible dictator and we don’t know if a more horrible one will come along. And we saw it happen in Egypt, in some ways we saw it happen in Libya.
But here, we don’t have that problem. We’ve got the worst regime in the world by far, the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world. And then we have the National Council of the Resistance of Iran, the NCRI, led by the president-elect, Madame Rajavi. Coalition of resistance organizations respected throughout the world. There are representatives of most of the major countries in the world here. They’ve gotten to know her. They’ve gotten to respect her. In my country, she’s thoroughly respected.
We know there’s a group of people who have been fighting for freedom all their lives, who have lost the closest people to them in the fight for freedom, who are dedicated to it.
People here at Ashraf — I spent a lot of time with them — these are people who are dedicated to freedom. And if you think that’s a cult, then there’s something wrong with you. There’s something missing in your soul.
But we know that there is a governmen-in-exile, it negotiates with the whole world, and it’s written down plain as can be what it stands for. And it looks just like our Bill of Rights, just like the universal declarations of freedom and decency and human rights enshrined in the great documents of the world.
Free elections within six months is the promise, and I believe it will be fulfilled. They’re for gender equality. They’re for human rights. They’re for a system of law. They’re for fair trial. And because of their history, they oppose capital punishment because there’s been too much of it.
This is a good organization. And it’s an organization that is ready, willing and able not to take over Iran but to guide Iran to elections as quickly as possible, and hopefully they will be part of the coalition governing Iran like they’re part of the coalition that is trying to guide Iran to freedom. This is a group that we can support. It’s a group that we should stop maligning, and it’s a group that should make us comfortable having regime change in the worst regime in the world.
Here’s what you can do. You can be a witness like in the biblical sense of a witness. You know something that a lot of people don’t know. You know really how bad it is in Iran. And you know about MEK. And you know about Madame Rajavi. And you know the truth, not the lies, “the cult, they don’t have support in Iran.” Why has the Ayatollah been murdering them for 40 years if they don’t have support in Iran? The Ayatollah and Rouhani have said that this organization is the only one that’s really a danger to them.
You now have a responsibility because of your knowledge. Don’t hide your eyes. You’ve got to get the leaders of your country to stand up so you can all be proud of your country and its heritage.
I get attacked and my colleagues who will be here in a moment get attacked in America. Why we’re doing this? We’re doing it really very simply because we love freedom and we can’t turn our back on people who are being treated this way, and we can’t turn our back on a situation that could be catastrophic for them and catastrophic for the world. You know what I say to them? Keep doing it. I wear it as a badge of honor. I support freedom, you support oppression. I support democracy, you support a dictatorship. I support decent people who share the values of decent governments and you support mass murderers. Now who’s right and who’s wrong?
But I know and I feel as I’ve told you. I know why there’s an optimism in this room. It’s because we’re going to be in Tehran much sooner than all those cynics believe. You know why? Because we are hazer, hazer, hazer. (We are ready).
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