The future of Iran with Maryam Rajavi

By Linda Chavez Women in the political arena can be a very potent transformative force. I know this firsthand from almost 50 years in the challenging field of politics. In this long odyssey, the women who changed me — who changed how I understand leadership , sacrifice, and what it means to fight for freedom — are mostly unsung heroines the world has never heard of. And that silence is not an accident. It is a strategy.  The case in point is Iran, where there is a great deal of debate about its future. For years, I have stood alongside the Iranian Resistance , not from a comfortable distance, but close enough to see decisions being made when the cameras were off, and the stakes were life and death. I was there during the Camp Liberty years, when thousands of unarmed men and women of the Iranian resistance were trapped in a camp near Baghdad airport, stripped of their protective barriers, denied medical supplies, and blockaded from food shipments, while rockets from the Iranian re...

Madam Rajavi, distinguished guests, it’s a great pleasure to be here among you to discuss the situation of women in Iran. We have all heard and read about the subjugation of women under the theocratic regime. We are familiar with its discriminatory laws, its degrading treatment of women, and the deep institutionalized misogyny that defines the ruling dictatorship. This regime is, in every sense of the word, a monster—a system whose record in every field is not just zero, but less than zero. Today, I want to focus on two issues: first, a false narrative or, at best, a misguided perception; and second, the achievements of Iranian women rather than only their suffering. There is a persistent misperception that women had rights under the Shah and enjoyed equality. This claim is false. The Shah’s regime was a brutal dictatorship, ruling by torture, execution, censorship, and fear. That is why the Iranian people do not wish to return to a monarchy and why they see Reza Pahlavi as a continuat...

The long line of women, who sacrificed their lives for freedom in the struggle against both Shah and the mullahs, speaks to us today; from Fatemeh Amini, Marzieh Oskouei, and Azam Rouhi Ahangaran to Ashraf Rajavi, Giti Givechian, Zohreh Ghaemi, Sussan (Ozra Alavi Taleghani), and thousands of other pioneering women. Look at this book. The title of this book is “The Massacre of PMOI Women in Evin Prison in 1988.” It tells the epic story of women who, over seven years in the most terrifying torture chambers, in the “graves,” the “cages,” and “the residential units”, died and were reborn a thousand times, only to rise with heads held high. They mocked the depths of Ward 209 of Evin, emerged as victors from the solitary cells of Gohardasht, reduced the “Death Commissions” to pleading, and on the eve of massacre sang of the tyrant’s demise, making the very walls of Evin Prison tremble. With such a source of inspiration, Iran’s uprising represents one of the most authentic and significant res...

Twenty-two years ago, in a speech at the European Parliament, I emphasized that neither appeasement nor war are the solution to Iran’s crisis. The only solution is the overthrow of the regime by the Iranian people and their organized resistance . The failure and damaging consequences of appeasement have long been proven. Appeasement has been one of the greatest obstacles to change in Iran. The blacklisting of the PMOI/MEK by Western governments at the regime’s request is a case in point. Likewise, the bombing of PMOI centers in the Iran-Iraq border region followed by the consolidation of the National Liberation Army’s weapons in 2003, resulted in the shackling of a ready force capable of toppling the regime or at least posing a major barrier to its regional aggressions, all to the benefit of religious fascism. This development solely benefited the religious fascism. Developments over the past year in Iran , and over the past two decades in the region, have also demonstrated that forei...

The January uprising , overall, had three sides: On one side stood the rebels, those who held the battlefield and sacrificed their lives for freedom. On the opposing side stood the ruling clerics, spilling blood without restraint. And on the third side stood the remnants of the Shah and his son, who sought to hijack the fruits of this sacrifice, with the ultra-reactionary slogan “Long Live the Shah,” which only gave the clerical regime freer hand to massacre the protesters. A slogan that became a symbol of division, serving Khamenei, empowering the suppressive forces, and obstructing the path of uprising. However, we are now in the third decade of the 21st century. And, in the words of Massoud (Rajavi) : “Anyone who imagines they can hijack Iran’s new democratic revolution, just as the Constitutional and the anti-monarchical revolutions were usurped and drowned in blood, they are gravely mistaken.” We are speaking about a resistance that has fought unceasingly for 60 years against two ...