By Jubin Katiraie
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday showed once again that he is a pathological liar as he tried desperately to reframe the government’s failures, fights, and felonies.
However, it did make it clear that Iran was failing to deal with the multitude of crises it’s facing domestically and internationally. It is clear that after four years of crimes against the Iranian people and the world, the government is at an impasse entirely of its own creation and that the only solution is regime change.
Rouhani spoke of the importance of political freedom and democracy without seeing the irony in executing political prisoner Navid Afkari just two weeks ago or Mostafa Salehi in early August for taking part in peaceful protests in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The government has also sentenced a number of other political prisoners to death, while thousands more linger in Iran’s dungeons, and at least 1,500 were shot dead in the November uprising.
He then tried to dismiss protests against Iranian interference in Iraq and Lebanon (and even the anti-establishment protesters in Iran) as “undemocratic” because the government in charge was voted in during an election. Even if the democratic election story were true, it ignores the fact that people are allowed to protest the government in a democracy and they are certainly allowed to call for a change in the government.
Rouhani then claimed that the accusations of the government’s pursuit of nuclear weapons were false, something proved to be a lie by government documents that were leaked by the Iranian Resistance.
In response to the speech, the Iranian Resistance wrote: “We don’t need to reiterate every lie Rouhani said during his UNGA speech to come to the conclusion that he was trying to hide something in plain sight. The truth is that the Iranian government is the perfect example of an authoritarian rule inching toward its end. It had already lost its legitimacy at home, but the threadbare image of democracy and reform it was showing to the world is falling apart.”
They noted that not only are Iran’s suppressive forces losing their ability to actually stop protests but that Iran’s allies are finding it harder to defend a government that kills young people for voicing opposition.
