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NCRI \u2013 Addressing a conference in Paris on February 26, Howard Dean, Former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and Governor of Vermont, denounced the clerical dictatorship in Tehran that has nothing to do with Islam and expressed support for the third option proposed by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi and her ten-point plan for future Iran.<\/p>\n
The conference was attended by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, and dozens of distinguished international personalities.
Excerpts from transcribed text of his speech follow:<\/p>\n
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I come to Europe and am asked to give speeches, and Europeans are always very famous, because they always accuse the Americans properly of acting without thinking.
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The problem is, in Europe, they always think without acting, and we are going to change that today.\u00a0 The Persian nation is an extraordinary nation with a 2500 year history of extraordinary achievement.\u00a0 The Ayatollahs and the mullahs and President Ahmadinejad are not Persians, they are interlocutors holding our great nation hostage.\u00a0 The winds have changed or blowing through the Middle East.\u00a0 Young people are creating this revolution.\u00a0 It is a secular revolution.\u00a0 There will be religious people, there will be non religious people.\u00a0 This is a revolution for all young people.\u00a0 People always say to me, how can we help this happen, how can this happen in the United States?
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We should make a rule that no one over 50 may serve as a United States senator, or in the French parliament, or in Britain, or in Egypt or anywhere else.\u00a0 The future belongs to those people who are under 35 years old, who are making change by electing the first Afro American president in the United States of America by overthrowing an autocratic regime in Tunisia and in Egypt and will soon overthrow an autocratic regime in Iran. And the regime in Iran has nothing to do with Islam.\u00a0 I studied the Koran when I was in college.\u00a0 Nowhere could I recognize Islam in what is going on in Iran today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like so many people before them, both Christians, Jews, Hindus, these rulers are using religions as an excuse for their abominable behavior, they are not religious people, they only claim a mandate from God.\u00a0 God will decide who has that mandate, not the Ayatollahs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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America is a great nation because in our founding documents, we have laid out a vision for humanity which contradicts the cynicism so often found in ancient civilizations.\u00a0 It is not an accident that we are a nation of immigrants, that people from all over the people well represented also among Iranian people, have come to the United States for freedom and democracy and opportunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But America makes mistakes too.\u00a0 We have to live up to the high moral ground which is in the constitution of the United States and in the declaration of independence, and that means standing up for freedom and democracy, even when it may not be in our geopolitical interest.\u00a0 And that is why we must change our position on the MEK and stop calling them a terrorist organization.\u00a0 They are not a terrorist organization, they have their own bill of rights, which is an extraordinary thing under the leadership of Madame Rajavi, and we appreciate what she has done greatly.
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Let me quote from Madam’s plan, 10 point plan for the future of Iran.\u00a0 From our point of view, the ballot box is the only criterion for legitimacy.\u00a0 We want a plural system, freedom for parties and assembly, we will commit and support the abolition of the death penalty.\u00a0 We will establish the separation of church and state.\u00a0 This does not sound like a terrorist organization to me.\u00a0 MEK is not a terrorist organization.\u00a0 And we have stood up time and again sometimes in error.\u00a0 Sometimes we have failed, but we try to stand up for those who support human rights and human dignity.
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There are 3,400 brave Iranian men and women in Camp Ashraf.\u00a0 Now, as you know, I oppose President Bush when he decided to attack Iraq.\u00a0 One of the reasons I opposed him is because I believed that would create a larger influence for the government of Iran and the religion, and that is exactly what happened.\u00a0 So like Governor Ridge, I take the position that Al-Maliki would not be prime minister of Iraq today and he ought to take some direction from the United States of America.\u00a0 We do have an opportunity to influence him.\u00a0 Do not commit the same human rights violations that Saddam Hussein was committing the Shite majority in Iraq.\u00a0 Do not do that.\u00a0 The United States must be clear.\u00a0 If you do that, we will withdraw our support because you are not a democracy if you can’t stand up for the human rights of other human beings.
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The truth is that Prime Minister Maliki still depends on American troops even though we stopped combat operations.\u00a0 I wish the best for the people of Iraq.\u00a0 I did not support the invasion, but since we have done it I hope it turns out as well as it can, but it will not turn out well for the Iraqi people if it doesn’t turn out well for the Iranian people who live in Iraq.
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For many years it has been an illusion that there are moderates in the Iranian regime.\u00a0 I, like Ambassador Richardson, support President Obama’s view that we should try to talk to our enemies, but like Governor Richardson, like Governor Ridge, like General Jones, when the hand of friendship meets a closed fist, it’s time to stop talking and start doing and the thing we could do is protect the human rights of the people in Ashraf and to delist the MEK.
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And we must go further than that.\u00a0 The fact is that there are terrorists in Iran.\u00a0 The government of Iran is a terrorist organization, and we should treat it accordingly with the appropriate sanctions.\u00a0 I agree that the proper alternative is a third way.\u00a0 An American invasion or American troops in the region would be foolish.\u00a0 We have already found out how bitterly that is resisted by people in the region.\u00a0 But we cannot turn our eyes blindly to human rights violations of a government, because the people who are in the most danger of that are the people in the United States of America.
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When you turn a blind eye to human rights anywhere else in the globe, you have turned a blind eye to rights in your own country as well.\u00a0 We have never done that as well.\u00a0 Tom spoke eloquently about the sacrifices that we made on the shores of Normandy so many years ago.\u00a0 Those sacrifices will continue, because Americans are not the only ones who made sacrifices.\u00a0 What about the brave Iranians that went into the streets in Tehran not so long ago, they went into the streets in Tehran in 2009.\u00a0 We are all in this together.\u00a0 What keeps us together, especially in this young generation, is a solidarity, whether it’s in China, whether it’s in Iran, whether it’s in South America, whether it’s in United States, that this young generation believes that human rights are universal, they are the first generation to act on that.
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There is the extraordinary power of Twitter, of the Internet, of the ability to bypass political propaganda.<\/p>\n
This young generation is a generation of a world, they know no national boundaries, and the respect for human rights is the same whether they are Arab, African, Persian, Chinese or American.\u00a0 That is the world that we are living.\u00a0 Many years ago, on this continent, there was a movement not so different that Ahmadinejad and khamenei are perpetrating.\u00a0 They had their revolutionary guards, they were called the Brown Shirts, and there was a big conference in the late 1930s, after Czechoslovakia had been overrun and the prime minister of Britain came back and said, peace is at hand.\u00a0 The definition of insanity is repeating the same course and expecting a different result.\u00a0 It is no longer time for appeasement, it is time for us to stand with the brave people of Egypt, of La Tunisia, of Iran.\u00a0 All over the world people are standing for their own rights.\u00a0 The least we can do is stand with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thank you so much.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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