On July 12, 2019, dignitaries from dozens of countries across the world attended an exhibition in Ashraf 3, Albania, which depicted 120 years of resistance for freedom and democracy in Iran. The exhibition was part of the five-day Free Iran 2019 event at the main headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Following the exhibition, a conference was held, in which several of the visitors delivered speeches, issuing remarks about the struggles of the Iranian people and their resistance movement for freedom in their country.
Following are key remarks by former Mayor of New York City and current lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump at the Ashraf 3 conference.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani:
Thank you very much, Madame [Maryam] Rajavi, all of the distinguished guests. I am very, very honored to be here. I’m very moved by the last half hour going through the really remarkable and shocking photographs of so many people. Senator Lieberman said when we were going through it, it’s one thing to hear the names and the numbers, it’s another thing to see all the faces.
A hundred and twenty thousand of your people slaughtered starting decades ago and some just a few months ago. So, when you look at it and see all the martyrs who have lost their lives, lost their lives because all they wanted was what they’re entitled to as human beings: freedom, decent treatment, fair treatment. Their life was taken away from them. Some because they were babies.14, 20, 80. And it’s not history. We walked through museums … and it’s history. Horrible history, terrible history, something (we still don’t) understand, probably if we could understand it maybe we could prevent it in the future.
But still it’s history, it’s over. Some of those people were murdered less than a year ago. This is still going on. They’re still murdering, they’re still slaughtering, they’re still endangering their own people. I believe they have to come to an end. I believe it’s inevitable that they’ll come to an end. That kind of oppression and authoritarian government always comes to an end. Human beings eventually their desire for freedom and the desire for fair treatment winds out. Because we don’t know exactly when, and until when we’re going to see more and more of that. so, I think that we have to redouble our efforts.
I think those of us who are friends of the PMOI and MEK, I think we’ve done a lot. I think we can be very proud of what we’ve accomplished. There were times I know we were very frustrated that we couldn’t do it fast enough because we knew the longer it took, the more people would be killed, and that did happen. You look at the exhibit and you see what was done in 2011 or 2012 or 2013. All those people we see that were killed afterwards would not have been killed.
But it’s the same thing now. It’s something that I feel very frustrated that we haven’t accomplished, we haven’t been able to get out to the rest of the world, including in my country, what a good solid remarkable heroic brave organization this is. How it’s something we did not have, something we didn’t have when the Arab Spring took down the government of Egypt. We had no alternatives and what did we get? We got the Muslim Brotherhood, didn’t we?
And what about Libya? We took down a neutered, weak, submissive dictator and what did we get? Civil war, chaos.
Well, here that’s not the case. It was through then that I always wondered why this wasn’t considered part of the Arab Spring. Why the people of MEK weren’t on the front page of Time magazine like the people who brought the Muslim Brotherhood to Egypt as defenders of freedom, fighters for freedom. Why weren’t they? Because we haven’t gotten the message above the cynical people, those people who think they’re so smart they don’t listen to others and maybe some of the evil people who subscribe to the propaganda of Iran and the regime.
But we’re better than they are. We should be able to get this message out. I believe that if the citizens of my country could observe this, the 300 plus million citizens, if Bob Torricelli and I can agree on it, this is like a 70% issue, Bob, right, 80%? How many Americans wouldn’t be moved by walking through that hall? How many Americans wouldn’t walk out there feeling exactly like I feel, this should have never have happened, how did we let it happen like we feel about other slaughters like this. But about this one, it’s not just something we did wrong in the past. We could have prevented the Holocaust. We can’t now. We can just learn from it. We can prevent this from continuing. We can prevent it from continuing by persuading, not being intimidated, making sure that people learn and find out about the alternative that exists because there is an alternative to the theocracy, to the murder, to the slaughter.
It’s a government-in-exile, it’s been here for a long time. It’s gained a great deal of knowledge and sophistication over the years. It’s gained a great deal of acceptance all throughout the world. And it gives us confidence that if we make those efforts to overthrow that horrible regime, sooner rather than later, we will not only save lives but we’ll be able to entrust the transition of Iran to a very responsible group of people. Not just one group, but the whole large number of people that are part of this coalition. I believe that’s something that would very much accelerate the inevitable.
And it’s not very comforting to state the inevitable, which is it will happen some day. Because between now and some day, 100 lives, a thousand, two thousand… more, how will the Ayatollah react when the day comes when the choice is, well, I have to leave or maybe if I just kill another 100,000 people maybe I can subdue them? I don’t know what choice he’s going to make. But we shouldn’t let it just happen inevitably. We should guide it, we should push it, we should be part of it. It’s our responsibility.
And lest we think this just affects Iranians, just think of how many of my own countrymen were killed by those animals. How many in Iraq, throughout the world. They threatened to do murder in our country a year ago, year and a half ago. They threatened to do murder us when I was here with Madame Maryam Rajavi a year and a half ago. They sent four people here to bomb us. They sent four people to Paris to bomb us last year. Maybe one day they’re going to accomplish that if we don’t stop them.
So, I think our conference this year should focus on what can we do to accelerate this. How can we get the message out better than we have in the past that there’s an organization waiting to guide Iran from despotism, barbarism, being a horrible problem throughout the world—we repeat without even thinking about it, it’s the biggest state sponsor of terrorism. What does that mean? State sponsor of terrorism? And we let them sit in the UN? We actually talk to them like they’re the human beings? And they’re the biggest state sponsor of terrorism? Somehow, we don’t equate these things. Or some of our people don’t. It’s our job to equate them. It’s our job to make sure this message gets out. And we have to hold ourselves responsible that we haven’t done it as effectively as we should. We can.
We have great cause here. There’s nothing better you can do in your life than to help liberate people.
And I can’t thank Madame Rajavi enough for allowing me to be part of this. It’s probably the thing I’m proudest of. It’s probably the thing my children are proudest of. And it’s the thing that I’m just not going to stop. And it isn’t just a slogan to me. I really want to see us in Tehran and have this meeting there. We gotta have it happen. We must have it happen. God bless you. And other people have been in the position wherein you keep trying and you fail, you keep trying and you fail, you keep trying and you fail. It’s going to happen. But let’s make it happen now rather than after another 100,000 deaths. Thank you and God bless you.
