By Staff writer, SF
The U.S. Representative Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US) sponsored a panel on Monday, February 11, to discuss the regime’s brutal domestic and foreign policy record over the past 40 years, during which they said that the Regime was “at its weakest point in history” and prospects for change are brighter than ever.
Soona Samsami, the NCRI’s representative in the U.S., provided a comprehensive look at the Iranian Regime’s current situation and crises, before assessing that she was optimistic about democratic change in Iran being achieved.
She said: “The Iranian people are calling for the establishment of a republic, based on democracy and separation of religion and state. In contrast to the regime’s attempts to paint a picture of strength on its 40th year in power, in reality, it is at its weakest point in history.”
But why is the Regime so weak? Four decades of corruption, embezzlement, and mismanagement have thrown the economy into freefall, which has devalued the currency, sent inflation and unemployment rates soaring, and forced 80% of the Iranian people into poverty.
Samsami explained that the Iranian people had fought and died to get rid of a dictatorship, but the mullahs usurped the revolution to put in place another one. That is why the Iranian people are fighting back and why protests took over more than 160 cities in all 31 Iranian provinces last year and why the mullahs have failed to suppress the anti-regime uprising. The people want the democracy that they should already have.
Adam Ereli, the former State Department official and ambassador to Bahrain, also spoke at the conference at Washington’s National Press Club to say that while the mullahs may still be in power, the Resistance is still there ready to fight.
He said that the best plan for the U.S. is to embrace the “capable opposition”, known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), and “stop appeasing the current regime”.
While Ali Safavi from the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee explained that the West’s policy of appeasement towards the Regime, neglected the Iranian people, led to the wrongful listing of the MEK as a terrorist group and helped prolong the dictatorship.
Safavi said: “The right policy is to recognize the rights of the Iranian people and the organized opposition to overthrow this regime. Unlike Syria and other countries suffering from dictatorships, Iran has a historic, real and viable alternative.”
This would help the Iranian people and frighten the mullahs, who are already deathly afraid of the MEK’s potential to overthrow them. That’s why, on no less than four occasions in 2018, Khamenei publicly said that the MEK was responsible for the uprising.
Samsami said: “The NCRI’s President-elect, Maryam Rajavi, represents the demands and aspirations of the Iranian people and protestors in recent years… Recognition of the NCRI as the sole democratic alternative to the terrorist religious dictatorship in Iran is the imperative to rectifying and ending the disastrous policy of appeasement over the past four decades.”
