In his address at the Berlin conference on October 26, Dr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, former Vice President of the European Parliament, presented a strong critique of Europe’s longstanding approach toward the clerical regime of Iran, characterizing it as a “failed policy” in urgent need of replacement.
Dr. Vidal-Quadras outlined the pervasive role of Iran’s regime in international terrorism and regional instability, calling for measures including diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, and political support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He emphasized that real change is within reach if Western leaders show “courage, political will, and determination.” According to Dr. Vidal-Quadras, such a policy shift is essential to supporting Iran’s transition to democracy and alleviating the suffering of its people.
Excerpts of Dr. Vidal-Quadras’s speech follow:
It is very true. A democratic change in Iran is at reach. It’s not only a question of faith, and we have a lot of faith. It’s a question of courage, political will, and determination, and then it will be at reach.
In this context, I want to refer to, a white paper that, we have recently, published, a white paper prepared by the think tank in Search of Justice International Committee, which I preside, a Think Tank based in in Brussels.
And, this white, paper is entitled Europe’s failed policy towards Iran, which is closely related to the title of this conference today.
The International Committee in Search of Justice (ISJ), as I said, is, is a think tank that was founded in 2008 by several members of the European Parliament and other political figures on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was founded with a purpose to promote democracy, civil liberties, and respect for human rights in Near East and the Middle East with special attention, of course, to Iran.
In Iran, for the last 45 years, criminal and totalitarian theocracy oppresses, brutally its people, expands terrorism all over the world, and is one of the main agents of warmongering, destabilization, and political unrest in the region and also at a global level.
We have been working very actively, through the last 3 decades together with many other national European and US, congress parliamentarians and former parliamentarians as well as a great number of political and academic personalities from both sides of the Atlantic, retired, some of them, others in office, and we have been working for regime change in Iran and supporting the Iranian democratic opposition to the mullahs, also either in exile or inside the country.
— Alejo Vidal-Quadras (@VidalQuadras) October 26, 2024
I’ve just referred to the Islamic Republic of Iran as a terrorist state. I am personally entitled to do so. As many of you know, on 9th November last year, a hitman hired by the Iranian regime, a French Tunisian individual called Mehrez Ayari shot me in Madrid, where I was walking in the street close to my home.
I saved my life miraculously. As you can see, I’m here in one piece. And, it was a miracle because in the last second, I tilted my head and the bullet that was aimed at my neck went to my jaw.
This murderer was arrested, last June by the Dutch police when he was about to kill, an Iranian dissident, and journalist who is in exile in the Netherlands, in Harlem, close to Amsterdam.
My case is one among many. The Iranian Ayatollah has perpetrated assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings on 5 continents.
A great number of them are in Europe. In the document, I was referring to in this white paper, there is a description of some of these crimes. And now let me go straight to the point that I would like to share with you this this afternoon.
The European Union policy, both of member states and of the union as such, about the Iranian dictatorship, has always been and still is a wrong policy.
It has failed miserably and must be completely changed. This is the essence of the message, I want to convey to you, and allow me now to elaborate shortly about it.
Negotiation and dialogue are legitimate and sometimes, useful to solve conflicts. But in the case of the Iranian regime, unfortunately, not only do not work but are counterproductive.
The repeated concessions made by the Western democracies to the Iranian clerics, namely the designation of the Iranian resistance as a terrorist, the joint comprehensive plan of action, the release of tens of billions of dollars, defrosting, different assets, the swapping of innocent European and American hostages by, for convicted criminals have come to nothing.
#live:@VidalQuadras addressing major int conf in #Berlin–
EU policy on #Iran based on appeasement, has been a total failure. Time for a new policy focused on the Iranian people & organized resistance for regime change & a democratic, republic#Time4FirmIranPolicy #BlacklistIRGC pic.twitter.com/LTRpHiHUHa— Shahin Gobadi (@gobadi) October 26, 2024
The Iranian regime has not been at peace or brought to rational behavior on the contrary. On the contrary, the reading of all these attempts to please them have been to perceive the West as weak and cowardly, and, consequently, to encourage their leaders to be more and more aggressive and to redouble their hostility.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not an opponent with which one can engage and interact under the rules of international politics. It is a fanatical, corrupt, and terrorist state based on ideological dogmas that make impossible any evolution from the inside.
The distinction between moderates and hardliners in this regime is a mirage, an illusion. All their components are the same.
They are all subservient to the supreme leader that has absolute power and their normal method to be present in the international scene is to try to impose their goals by means of violence, blackmail, or deceit.
The stubborn ignorance of this evident fact by European governments and by the 4 successive EU high representatives for common foreign and security policy has led Europe to failure and ridicule.
The Iranian mullahs do not just lie to us or attack us. They laugh at us.
Another commonplace that we hear in the Quay d’Orsay, in Paris, in Whitehall, in London, in the State Department in Washington, or in the Palace of Santa Cruz in Madrid, or in Schumann Square in Brussels, is that the fall of the Iranian Theocracy would bring chaos to the country, and so we will face a new Libya or a new Iraq or Somalia or Sudan or Syria.
So these big brains in foreign affairs ministries in European capitals or in Washington, assert pompously that is better the status quo, that the Iranian Ayatollahs can be malignant and deceitful and dangerous, but at least with them, we have a stable interlocutor.
At today's conference in #Berlin on the way forward on #Iran:
The world & Middle East stand at a crossrod, stand with & united behind the Iranian people & their organised resistance, NCRI, for prosperity or appease the criminal regime that survives through more terrorism,… pic.twitter.com/8plGQ4tNgl
— Dowlat Nowrouzi (@DowlatNowrouzi) October 26, 2024
And, an unstable interlocutor with which we can, negotiate and engage and find some kind of agreement. This is blatant blindness, not supported by objective reality.
Not objected, I said, by objective, reality. Iran has a solid literate, and cultivated civil society, a 3000-year-old civilization, a white middle class, and an intellectually rich academic community.
So, any analogy with these other countries has no sense. The idea that, Iran, is either a brutal dictatorship or a a mess of warlords in a failed state is pure nonsense.
The Iranian people are ready for true democracy, but they are deprived of it because a bunch of butchers impose their power by terror or bribery.
I do not need to underline to you how the world would be a better place if the Iranian oppressive regime disappeared and a real democracy would be established in Iran.
A new and resolute policy of the European Union towards Iran is urgently needed once the failure of appeasement is undeniable. The firm change of strategy should be based on the following elements.
First, international isolation of the Iranian regime, closing all European Union Embassies in Tehran, and expulsion of all diplomatic personnel from European Union Territory.
After all, the Iranian diplomatic premises in Europe are but centers of spying and terrorism.
We must make of the Islamic Republic of Iran, we must make the mullahs’ regime a pariah state.
Second, designation by the European Union of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.
As the United States as the United States and Canada have already done, The European Union must neutralize the operational capacities of a terrorist organization that is destabilizing near and Middle East and financing, training, and advising Iran’s proxies.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.
Third, financial strangling of the Iranian regime, enlarging and hardening economic and trade sanctions to weaken the financial muscle of the regime.
The latest from @isjcommittee President, Prof. Alejo @VidalQuadras in the Tagesspiegel: "Iran's repression at home and abroad: State terrorism that accepts no borders." https://t.co/uUWvdzrJ0m@eu_eeas @JosepBorrellF @vonderleyen @eucopresident
Here is the English text of the…
— International Committee in Search of Justice (@isjcommittee) October 30, 2024
Fourth, increase and constant pressure on the Iranian regime in international fora for their unacceptable violations of human rights against the women and the people of Iran.
In particular, calls for international justice to make the mullahs accountable for their crimes against humanity as denounced in the report of the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman.
And last and fifth, full political support of the National Council of Resistance of Iran as the real alternative to the Iranian dictatorship and the only Iranian organization able to conduct the transition to democracy in a peaceful and orderly way.
Stand by the people of Iran in their struggle to get rid of the Ayatollahs and achieve freedom and democracy. All these proposals are feasible and realistic and would accelerate the fall of the clerical dictatorship.
The objections focused on the suffering of the Iranian people because of sanctions or the possible retaliation by the mullahs are easy to reply to. Nothing can be more damaging and oppressive for the Iranians than the tyranny, they are enduring.
And it is difficult to imagine a retaliation worse than the attack of 7th October against the South of Israel with the consequent war in Gaza or the repeated attempts in the last, years to assassinate Western supporters of the resistance.
To the defenders of pragmatism and, realpolitik, that most probably will consider the contents of this white paper idealistic. And I would remind them that in politics, what is, in the end, materially effective is what is morally right.
And the battles of the 20th century against the totalitarian monsters that almost succeeded in their attempt to reduce the peoples of Europe to slavery are the best proof.
Let us humble and learn the lessons of history, or we will regret it when it is too late.
