Holding Ebrahim Raisi Accountable for Crimes Against Humanity Genocide, Regional Meddling, and Nuclear Defiance
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Maryam Rajavi Message to the conference in Washington, D.C-min
Today, October 28, 2021, in Washington D.C, the Iranian-American Communities in the United States would be hosting a bi-partisan conference to examine Iran’s nuclear defiance, rampant terrorism, and the role of the regime’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners. Distinguished American politicians will attend this event. This event and its participants would echo calls for holding Raisi and the entire regime accountable for their malign activities.
LIVE REPORT 2021 Free Iran Summit-min
The Iranian people are ready for the regime’s overthrow more than at any other time. It is time for the international community to side with the people of Iran and their desire for change. The Iranian people have clearly demonstrated their demands and their resolve for change. They reject the regime in its entirety.
So, let it be clear: regime change in Iran, by the Iranian people and their Resistance, is inevitable, and nothing can prevent it. It is time for the world to recognize this fact as well. The people of Iran expect governments, including the U.S. and the European governments, to revise their policy on Iran and side with the Iranian people.
On the nuclear issue, it is time to abandon the policy of ignoring the regime’s violations. The time has come to re-impose all of the UN Security Council resolutions suspended in 2015. The mullahs are using the nuclear talks to silence the international community about the worsening human rights situation in Iran and its terrorism and meddling in the region. Doing business with the regime will only fill the pocket of the IRGC and reinforce the suppressive organs and agencies in charge of the export of terrorism.
The people of Iran expect the international community to prosecute Ebrahim Raisi for genocide and crime against humanity in an international court. He is a mass murderer. He must be prosecuted now and not later.
I call on the international community and world leaders to adopt their policy on Iran in line with the Iranian people’s desire. And to identify Iran with its people and not with its criminal rulers.
Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States
Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States (2017- 2021)
I want to thank you for the outstanding work you are doing to promote a free Iran. Thank you all for continuing to stand strong in the name of freedom.
I can say with certainty that the American people support your goal of establishing a secular, democratic, non-nuclear Iranian republic that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
What the Iranian people have endured since 1979 will be recorded by history as one of the great tragedies of the modern era.
As a former elected leader, as an American citizen, and as a man of faith who believes that all people are created in the image of God, the Iranian people have always been in my heart.
Under the Trump-Pence administration, I am proud that America did not turn a deaf ear to the pleas of the Iranian people, and we did not remain silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s countless atrocities.
We proudly stood with the freedom-loving people of Iran.
We canceled the Iran nuclear deal, which had flooded the regime’s coffers with tens of billions of dollars, and pallets full of cash — money that it used to repress its own people and support deadly terror attacks across the wider world.
We imposed crippling new sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). We launched a campaign of maximum pressure, punishing the regime for its belligerent behavior and assault on its own citizens. We vigorously enforced sanctions to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero and deny the regime its principal source of revenue.
We called on the free nations of the world to stand with us. We encouraged world leaders to condemn Iran’s unelected dictators and defend the Iranian people’s unalienable right to chart their own future and determine their own destiny.
The Iranian regime has never been weaker than it is today. Its economy is in shambles. The inflation rate has skyrocketed. The Iranian currency has lost 90 percent of its value. Four out of five Iranians now live below the poverty line. Corruption is at an all-time high. By all indications, the Iranian people are ready for change.
The recent selection of Ebrahim Raisi to serve as Iran’s president is a sign of the regime’s growing desperation. 30 years ago, Raisi was in charge of the Ayatollah’s death squads. He is a brutal mass murderer responsible for the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners. His selection as president is intended to quash internal dissent and intimidate the people of Iran into remaining silent.
But we must never remain silent in the face of evil.
Today, we join you in pledging that his crimes must not go unpunished. Ebrahim Raisi must be removed from office by the people of Iran – and he must be prosecuted for crimes against humanity and genocide.
Today, the resistance movement in Iran has never been stronger. Resistance Units in Iran are the center of hope for the Iranian people. They are the engine for change from within during the uprisings and continued protests. On both political parties, the American people stand unequivocally on the side of the Iranian people and their Resistance.
One of the biggest lies the ruling regime has sold the world is that there is no alternative to the status quo. But there is an alternative – a well-organized, fully prepared, perfectly qualified, and popularly supported alternative called the MEK.
The MEK is committed to democracy, human rights, and freedom for every citizen of Iran and is led by an extraordinary woman: Mrs. Rajavi is an inspiration to the world. Her Ten Point Plan for the future of Iran will ensure freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and the freedom for every Iranian to choose their elected leaders.
Our greatest hope must always be for a peaceful, cooperative, and harmonious co-existence with Iran and all the sovereign nations of the world. The United States will always be ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.
But peace is only possible through strength.
Weakness arouses evil… but let there be no doubt that the American people remain strong – and we remain absolutely committed to defending freedom and standing up for oppressed people around the globe.
We know that Iran can be a great nation once again. We know the rich history of Iran, which stretches back to time immemorial, is the story of a people who have made great contributions to art, music, literature, science, and commerce – and we know that story is far from over.
All free nations of the world must continue to support the Iranian people in their calls for freedom and demand that Iran’s leaders cease their dangerous and destabilizing actions at home and abroad.
We stand with the proud people of Iran because it is right, and because the regime in Tehran threatens the peace and security of the world.
But no oppressive regime can last forever. The day will come that the Ayatollah’s iron-fisted grip on Iran will be gone. A new glorious day will dawn, a bright future will begin, ushering in an era of peace, prosperity, stability, and freedom for the good people of Iran.
Senator Joe Lieberman, US Vice President candidate (2000)
We are here not only because we believe in your cause, but because we believe in you. You have a heritage, you have a country from which you and your families come from, you grieve over the suffering of the people in Iran. You will not rest and neither will we until they are free.
You have a platform for the next great chapter of Iranian Persian history of values that are totally consistent with American values. You have a plan for the governance of Iran after this regime collapses. You have a courageous and inspirational leader, Madam Maryam Rajavi.
The greatest threat that the United States faces today is from the regime in Tehran. It has enabled aggression and subversion in the region and is bringing untold suffering and death to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and of course in Iran.
This regime has executed 30,000 of God’s children in 1988 only because they were members of the MEK. We are proud to be standing in their memory today and we will fight until we achieve our goal.
Instead of occupying the office of the president of a great country like Iran, Raisi should be arrested, taken to The Hague, and put on trial for crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. How can anyone in the leadership of our closest allies and the Biden administration believe that an effective agreement on nuclear weapons or anything else can be achieved with this regime? It is a delusion.
We should be increasing the pressure on the regime, adopting and enforcing new sanctions, stopping China from secretly buying Iranian oil, and urging the International Atomic Energy Agency to send the Iranian file to the United Nations Security Council.
The regime in Tehran is at its weakest point since the revolution. Its economy is in shambles. The regime in Tehran has not protected the people of Iran from the COVID-19 virus. That is not just incompetence; that is brutality.
The world can bring about the end of the regime by supporting the people of Iran and here in Washington we can rebuild if the administration will take the lead that historically bipartisan American policy toward Iran.
Michael Mukasey, 81st U.S. Attorney General
The selection of a person like Raisi who participated directly in a massacre of thousands in 1988 to be president should have been enough to show that the supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the rest of the regime do not care how they are perceived by the outside world.
Since he took office, we’ve witnessed the escalation of threats of missile launches, attacks by unmanned aerial vehicles and other instruments of destruction, and then approach the negotiations under the ill-fated JCPOA that can only be described as toying with the concept of a nuclear-free Iran, and simply running the clock while work proceeds toward enriching uranium at ever-higher levels, and using ever more advanced centrifuges to speed the process.
The character of the regime has continued to play out in courtrooms around the world. The trial of Assadollah Assadi concluded this year in a Belgian court. Assadi was an Iranian diplomat convicted of using his diplomatic cover to fly a bomb from Iran to Europe that was to have been exploded at a Free Iran rally in Paris in June of 2018.
More recently, the trial of Hamid Nouri for crimes committed during the 1988 massacre has been proceeding in Sweden.
The world, and in particular our own government, should not be paralyzed by the variety and enormity of the acts the mullahs have committed. The response should be unrelenting pressure and open willingness to deal with individual members of the regime, including Raisi himself, in whatever form becomes available.
The only way to end the regime’s conduct is to end the regime itself.
Continued pressure through sanctions, continued refusal to be fooled by the resuming of dishonesty about its nuclear program, and the pursuit of individual criminals can help. Those are the tools that we have and we should not hesitate to use them.
Senator Robert Torricelli, U.S. Senator (1997-2003)
The leadership in Tehran has gone from bad to selecting a war criminal, a leader of genocide, as president. They’ve gone from talking about using nuclear power using for peaceful purposes to enrichment that can mean nothing but the development of an atomic bomb.
They’ve talked about reentering the international community but sponsoring terrorism all over the region. It is not getting better; it is getting worse. I love our quality of optimism; I love the American belief in the future. However, the reality is that this regime must go by any means and it must happen now.
These dictators, these despots always look strong until they’re not. You know they’re going to fall; you know it is soon, you know it is going to happen because you know the Iranian people.
I have never seen a bipartisan coalition in America with the depth of support that the MEK has. I’ve never seen anything like it.
There is one organization that has never compromised with terror, never sat at a table and divided up your freedoms, never participated in genocide, isn’t responsible for your poverty. There’s one and that one organization has the means, the leadership, the focus, the international support to rejoin the international community. That organization is the MEK and Madam Rajavi is its leader, and we are the answer.
General James Conway, 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps
Iran is a threat to the United States to Europe, the Middle East, and freedom-loving people everywhere. They are conducting proxy wars right now as we are here today in two nations, and they have armed militia interfering in the governance of three others. Iran is one of four nations on the globe that has refused to acknowledge that terrorism is bad. They say we see it as an element of national power and if we have to exercise it, we will. 99% of the other nations on the globe do not see the world that way. Iran is hell-bent on bringing nuclear proliferation to the Middle East.
Iran now has a criminal for a president. Raisi has the blood of 30,000 of your countrymen on his hands. He was one of four members of that infamous Death Commission that oversaw 30,000 executions in 1988.
If we or a European nation start to deal with this person, all we will do is strengthen that regime.