EMET, Iranian Dissidents speak to Congressional Members, Staff
On Tuesday, February 23rd, Endowment for Middle East Truth President and Founder Sarah Stern had the opportunity to speak to a select group of Congress members and their staff regarding the Iranian “Green” movement and the importance of supporting Iranian dissidents. The following are her remarks:
Today, we are living in a time when the entire free Western world, as we know it, is being threatened by a brutal, tyrannical regime in Iran with nuclear and hegemonic ambitions. They have been THE destabilizing influence in the Middle East, responsible for the equipping, recruitment and training of Hezbollah and Hamas. Southern Lebanon has now become an Iranian proxy state through the terrorist group, Hezbollah, and Gaza has become an Iranian proxy state through the terrorist group, Hamas.
Ever since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian regime had declared war on America. Its first act was the taking hostage of 53 American embassy officials in 1979, In 1983, it bombed our marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen. No one doubts that it was responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing, commanded by the Blind Sheik Omar-Abdul Al Rahman. This regime is like a hydra , a many-headed monster, stretching its grasp into Iraq and Afghanistan, where they have been responsible for the manufacture and shipment of IEDs, heavy arms, and advanced roadside bombs, and where they have been responsible for supporting elements of the Iraqi insurgency, both Sunni and Shiite, alike.
This past Friday, February 19th, a report just came out from the International Atomic Energy Agency, that said it had discovered an additional 460 pounds of low enriched uranium, one-third more than Iran has previously disclosed. According to a report in this Saturday’s New York Times, the amount of enriched uranium that the mullahs now possess is sufficient-with added purification-to make an atomic bomb.
This crazed, theocratic regime thinks it will bring the coming of the twelfth Imam-the Messiah- by using these weapons against America and its allies. They have made their intentions perfectly clear.
Yet: there are beautiful, freedom loving dissidents in the street who are crying out for our support to overthrow the mullahs and to replace the regime with a Western styled democracy. Since the fraudulent result of the June 12th elections have been announced, they have bravely taken to the streets, risking
everything, even their very lives. Many of these young freedom fighters are disappearing at the hands of the Basij, never to be heard from again. They are being tortured, raped and summarily executed.
Natan Sharansky has said that the basic lesson of his lifelong struggle for freedom was for the oppressed to find the inner strength to confront evil, and for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in freedom, it is our obligation to find the moral clarity to be able to see evil.
We feel that there we have a moral imperative for America, once again, to obtain the moral clarity it once had, when Ronald Reagan had called us “the shining city on the Hill”, a beacon for freedom loving people everywhere. If we cannot be that, then we have simply forgotten everything that America stands for.
Sarah also had the honor of introducing two Iranian dissidents who spoke to congressional staffers about the many challenges currently faced by protestors, and what the U.S can do to further its supports for human rights and democracy in Iran.