Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States
Thank you. Mrs. Rajavi and other freedom fighters in Ashraf in Iran and outside Iran, thank you for allowing me to participate in this important conference and to help bear witness to the fact that the spirit of resistance is not diminished by the desperate flailing of the mullah’s regime and by their attempt to extinguish the flame that you represent.
We’re gathered here in a setting that’s partly virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the issues that Iran faces and that we deal with are not virtual, they’re very real. They’re issues presented by the selection of a mass murder, Ebrahim Raisi, to be the president of the Iranian regime, their issues presented by the exposure in a Belgian courtroom of the plot of the regime to bomb the free Iran rally in 2018 near Paris, and they are issues presented by the need now to support the democratic opposition to install a secular democratic and non-nuclear republican Iran.
You may notice that I said the selection rather than the election of Ebrahim Raisi. That is because the so-called election, as we heard, was, in fact, a hollow exercise, a sham, to make sure that Raisi was picked. And look who they’ve chosen. Ebrahim Raisi was a prominent member of the death commissions that organized the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran in 1988. Most of the members of the MEK on direct orders of then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Raisi has not denied his participation in that atrocity. He has, in fact, posted about it. This is not someone that any decent person or government should negotiate with. This is someone who we should insist be put before an international tribunal and made to answer for his deeds. And here I am joined by Prime Minister Johnson of Slovenia, who courageously called for Raisi to be tried and incur the wrath and a criticism of the Iranian regime. That wrath and criticism does not stain the Prime Minister’s record, he should wear it as a badge of honor. Some people suggest that we should not demand that Raisi be tried for his crimes because that will make it difficult for him to negotiate it or impossible for him to negotiate his way out of power. But Raisi has no intention of negotiating his way out of power. He takes pride in his record, and he claims that he is always, in his words, defending the people’s rights, security and tranquility. In fact, the only tranquility that Raisi has ever defended is the tranquility of the graves of the 30,000 victims of his property. He does not represent a regime that can change. He represents a regime that must be changed by the Iranian people. If any further proof were needed as to the character of this regime, it’s readily available in the record of the trial of Asadollah Asadi that concluded this year in a Belgian court. Asadi was an Iranian diplomat, convicted of using his diplomatic cover himself to fly a bomb from Iran to Europe that was to be exploded at a free Iran rally near Villepinte at the end of June of 2018. That bomb was intended to kill Mrs. Rajavi and many of the dignitaries who are participating in this meeting today who were in attendance at that rally in 2018. It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of that trial and that verdict. What it proved was that a regime diplomat Asadollah Asadi himself personally carried the bomb from Iran and handed it over to two accomplices, taught them how to use it, and then checked with them to make sure that the plot was proceeding. The investigation by a joint operation of French, German and Belgian police concluded that this was a state decision, not the personal initiative of any individual participant. The operation was approved by the National Supreme Security Council, headed by then President Rouhani supposedly a moderate. This was state terrorism not just state sponsored terrorism, but a direct act of the regime to commit a terrorist act outside Iran. This was the first time that an official of the regime was literally caught in the act. And his only defense was that he should have been the beneficiary of diplomatic immunity, a defense that was soundly rejected by the court that convicted him and his co-defendants and sentenced them to long prison terms.
The selection of the mass murderer Raisi as President and the conviction of the regime’s diplomat Asadi who were trying to perpetrate a bombing show that this is not a regime that will behave like a normal government, one that adheres to internationally recognized norms. The only way to end this regime’s behavior is to end this regime. It’s important now to keep in mind those who rally across Iran to protest the difficult economic conditions that prevail in that country. Do not direct their protests against the United States or against any other country that has imposed sanctions. They direct their protests explicitly to the mullahs. They have said that the enemy is the mullahs and they lie when they say it is America, and those protesters have also shouted down Khamenei. There was already a democratic alternative to the corrupt and terrorist regime of the ayatollah. It is the NCRI with its 10-point program for a democratic, secular, non-nuclear republic that guarantees equal rights for all people, men and women. The NCRI headed by Mrs. Rajavi, who has tirelessly fought to bring those goals about. We’re here to rally support for that alternative and for the efforts of Mrs. Rajavi to end the nightmare that Iranians have been living in since 1979. We’re all ready to help that effort. Our fondest hope is that those efforts succeed and that we celebrate success in a free and democratic Iran. I can think of no more appropriate way to close these remarks than with the cry of freedom fighters we heard from and of my friend, Joe Lieberman. [I’m ready]