Paris, June 16 – Arab nations must act to curb Iranian influence if there is ever to be peace and stability in the Middle East, a major conference has been told.
Tehran is spreading terror and sowing sectarian discord in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, top Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi warned delegates at a conference on Sunday on religious extremism and Iran’s ‘destructive role’.
The major conference, held north of Paris at the headquarters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), drew participants such as former Algerian Prime Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali, former Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Elorabi, and former Palestinian Women’s Affairs Minister Rabiha Diab.
Maryam Rajavi said the experience of the Arab coalition’s response against the occupation of Yemen by Tehran and its proxies showed that the solution for regional crises is exercising firmness against the Iranian regime.
“This policy needs to be implemented across the entire region and sustained until the complete expulsion of the regime and its puppets. Pushing the regime back into its own territory will tremendously expedite its downfall”, she said.
Maryam Rajavi said the Tehran regime is tangled in a “whirlpool of three wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen” which has made it “extremely weak despite its hollow show of force”.
The Iranian regime’s “perceived power” is due to the “weak policies” of the United States and other western and Middle Eastern countries, Rajavi said, adding that the countries of the region had committed two miscalculations which greatly aided Tehran’s rulers.
The first was the misconception that the regime’s meddling could be curbed through tolerance. The second was the misconception that any initiative to confront the Iranian regime must be led by the US.
These two mistakes deprived the region of a tangible and indispensable unity of action with the Iranian Resistance, and they neutralized regional capacities and capabilities for confronting the Iranian regime’s aggressions, Maryam Rajavi said.
She said that the only way to counter extremism is the overthrow of Iran’s regime by the people and Resistance. She pressed world leaders to assist the Syrian people to overthrow the Assad dictatorship with an initiative similar to that of Yemen, evict Iran’s regime from Iraq while arming Iraqi Sunni tribes and allowing their participation in the Iraqi political process, and support the Iranian Resistance as the main opposition to the Iranian regime.
Other speakers at the conference included Anissa Ben Amour, a former Algerian Minister; Hoda Badran, Chair of the Network of Arab Women from Egypt; Bassam Al-Omoush, a former Jordanian Minister and Ambassador to Iran; and Najimeh Taytay, a former Minister of Education and Youths from Morocco.
