NCRI – Making her address for Nowruz (the Iranian New Year) in Tirana, Albania, Maryam Rajavi said that the end of the Iranian regime was as inevitable as the passage from winter to spring.
Speaking to members of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), the National Council of Resistance, and guests from Albania, France and United States, she reflected on ‘the years of siege’ from which the resistance had emerged and the multiple crises facing the regime.
Mrs Rajavi thanked ‘beautiful’ Albania for its courage in offering refuge to those PMOI members who had escaped the ordeal of Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The organisation, despite the Iranian regime’s best efforts at annihilating it, was strengthened and building ‘a thousand Ashrafs inside Iran.’ The resistance sought, Mrs Rajavi said, ‘A colourful Nowruz where the Baluchis, Kurds, Arabs, Azeris and all ethnic groups would share; and a rich Nowruz filled with tolerance where Shiites and Sunnis, Christians and Jews, and followers of all religions can co-exist in peace in a society based on separation of religion and state.’
Outlining the crises facing the regime in Tehran, Mrs Rajavi said they were threefold. First, the people did not want either faction: the regime’s own figures showed that, in the past year, there had been about ten thousand protests – ‘a daily drill for uprooting the mullahs’ rule of oppression.’ Second, the regime fears a new US policy in the region. Third, the theocracy faced the issue of the succession to Khamenei.
Mrs Rajavi acknowledged that ‘the overthrow of the religious dictatorship is entirely the responsibility of the Iranian people,’ but she warned Western governments not to put obstacles in the way of Iran’s citizens. First, she asked that the West make its commercial and diplomatic relations contingent on an end to executions and torture in Iran. Second, Mrs Rajavi urged the expulsion of the regime’s forces from Middle Eastern countries infiltrated while the West appeased the Iranian government. Third, she called for international action against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as the main perpetrator of repression and killings in Iran and elsewhere. Mrs Rajavi also warned the West not to be fooled by the regime’s propaganda about the forthcoming election: it would be a sham as had all those which had preceded it.
Saying that the desire for freedom was ‘deep personal need’ of every Iranian, she quoted Massoud Rajavi: ‘No one can stop the coming of spring.’