International summit urges UN to take tougher action against Iran

An international summit of activists and political
leaders on Friday called on the UN to get tough on Iran’s “murderous,
terrorist” government by implementing stronger sanctions against the regime in
Tehran.
More than 100,000 people from Europe, the US and
Iran took part in the online Transatlantic Summit to Support a Free Iran, which
was organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the
People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
Among them were Republican and Democratic US
politicians who set aside domestic differences to join the condemnation of the
Iranian regime and demand an end to its campaign of repression.
Several speakers highlighted a “new wave of
executions” in Iran stemming from mass protests that began in 2018 and surged
again in November 2019 after the Iranian regime increased the price of
gasoline.
There was an international outcry this week after it
was announced on Sept. 12 that Navid Afkari, an Iranian national wrestling
champion, had been executed. He was arrested during the 2018 protests and
accused of killing a security guard, a charge he denied.
“His only crime was to rise up and fight to
overthrow a regime that has devastated Iran and drenched it in blood while
plundering the nation,” said Maryam Rajavi, the newly elected president of
NCRI, during her opening remarks at the summit.
“The people of Iran had been protesting for weeks
against the death sentence handed down to him by (Iranian Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei’s
judiciary. The people of Iran, human-rights advocates, freedom lovers and
athletes launched an unprecedented worldwide campaign to stop the inhuman
verdict.
“Today, Navid Afkari lives on in the hearts and
struggle of thousands of resistance units in Iran, (which) will continue to
resist and rise up for freedom and justice.”
The Iranian leadership has a long history of
executing activists who oppose its rule. In 1988, more than 30,000 protesters
were rounded up and put to death. Rajavi said that Iran’s leaders should face
justice for those killings and the murders that followed in the following three
decades.
“The experience of the past 40 years of the clerical
regime’s rule in Iran has shown that it has continued its rule by committing
120,000 executions on political grounds, including the 1988 massacre of 30,000
political prisoners, 90 percent of whom belonged to the PMOI,” she added.
“The regime has been condemned 66 times so far by
the UN General Assembly, as well as in the Human Rights Commission and Council
for its gross human rights violations.”
Iran has spent more than $30 billion to protect the
regime of dictator Bashar Assad in neighboring Syria, Rajavi said, ordering
Iranian militants and their allies deployed there to target and kill American
soldiers and advisers.
With American politics increasingly divided in the
run-up to the presidential election on Nov. 3, there was a rare display of
harmony between Republicans and Democrats.
The long list of speakers included Republicans such
as Trump adviser and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former house speaker
Newt Gingrich, and senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. On the Democratic side,
senators Bob Menendez, Jeanne Shaheen and Kirsten Gillibrand, and former
senator Joe Lieberman all called for tougher and more restrictive sanctions on
Iran.
“Iran is a regime of terror,” Giuliani said during
his live video address. “Every year brings a new year of violations of human
rights, deprivation and terrorism.”
Although most speakers looked to the future, urging
the UN to strengthen its sanctions against Iran, Giuliani took the opportunity
to criticize former President Barack Obama for trying to “appease” Tehran in
2015 by agreeing to give the Iranians $1 billion at the time of the negotiations
for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called nuclear deal,
under which Iran agreed to give up its research into nuclear weapons.
British MP David Jones said that the (JCPOA) and the
failure to crack down on the Iranian regime had “encouraged them to pursue
terrorism against its critics,” including members of the US Senate and
Giuliani, who has been an outspoken critic of the regime for many years.
Other speakers including former general James Jones,
who served during the Obama administration. He denounced the regime in Tehran
as one that engages in “scandalous, outrageous and unspeakable cruelty to their
own people.”
On Aug. 14, the UN Security Council rejected a
US-led draft resolution calling for an extension of a UN arms embargo on Iran,
which is due to expire in October. Trump is expected to announce this week that
the US will impose its own embargo against Iran, and urge other nations to
follow suit.
Rajavi criticized the UN for failing to act after
the attacks on protesters last fall, or to condemn the execution of Afkari.