This week I will be in Brussels, the city where Europe protects the interests and future freedom and prosperity of 450 million Europeans.
I will meet with leaders of the European Parliament from different parties. I will also meet with members of the Belgian government and parliament.
My message to all of them will be the same: Europe's policy towards the Islamic Republic has failed, and Europe's elected lawmakers are among those best placed to change it. Not only because it will benefit the people of Iran. But because it will benefit Europe and its citizens.
Europe needs no introduction to this regime. In recent years, here in Belgium a so-called diplomat of the Islamic Republic was convicted in Antwerp over a bomb plot in France, a Belgian aid worker was taken hostage and traded for his release, and a scholar who taught at the VUB has spent a decade on death row in Tehran.
In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and other European countries networks of extremists, funded by the Islamic regime, are plotting attacks.
The EU has designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, which is welcome. But Europe's approach to Tehran is still largely appeasement, and the regime knows it.
Europe has been slow to accept that this regime is weak, divided, and it will fall. In January, millions of Iranians from every province and every walk of life rose up. More than 40,000 of them were slaughtered in two nights.
Since then, the regime has learned to kill without making headlines, hanging prisoners one or two at a time, some publicly from cranes. More than 70 political prisoners have been executed since January, and more than 100 protesters face execution today. That is not the conduct of a confident state. It is a wounded animal lashing out and seeing what it can get away with.
A regime like this cannot be a partner. It has lied for 47 years and negotiates only to buy time. Any deal with it lasts only until it has bought enough time and strength to break it.
The Islamic Republic is supporting Russia's war against Ukraine, pursuing nuclear weapons, developing missiles that reach Europe, blackmailing Europe by closing the Strait of Hormuz, and committing terrorism on European soil. Standing with the Iranian people is not an act of charity, it is Europe’s national security necessity.
Iranians are not waiting for the world to save them. They are fighting for their liberation and they are calling on me to lead.
I have a plan to bring this regime down: building a movement in every town and city, deepening the divisions within the regime and drawing defectors from its security forces, uniting the diaspora into the broadest possible coalition, and securing practical support from abroad. That support is what I have come to Brussels to seek.
That coalition spans the whole nation: left and right, republican and monarchist, across every language, religion and region. It is united by four principles: Iran’s territorial integrity, the separation of religion and state, the individual rights of all citizens, and the right of the people to choose their form of government in free and fair elections. Anyone who accepts them has a place in this movement, including those who disagree with me.
And we are preparing for the day after. Through the Iran Prosperity Project, experts and technocrats in dozens of fields are building the foundations of a stable, lasting democracy. My goal is long-term stability, not a quick win.
What Iranians need from Europe is not sympathy. It is for Europe to stop throwing a life raft to a dying regime. And Europe already knows how. After Russia invaded Ukraine, it expelled intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover, sanctioned oligarch networks, traced assets hidden through relatives and proxies, and froze bank accounts and luxury property.
The Islamic Republic deserves the same treatment, and the European Parliament can lead the way.
Members of the European Parliament can act on five fronts.
First, set the standard. Parliament called for the Revolutionary Guards to be designated a terrorist organisation for years, and in January it happened. It should now use its resolutions to call on the Council and the Commission to apply the Russia toolkit to the Islamic Republic: a task force, like the one Europe built to freeze and seize oligarchs' assets, to expose beneficial ownership, close front companies and freeze the regime's hidden wealth.
Second, press member state governments to expel the regime's assets: not only its diplomats, but IRGC operatives, the relatives who hold its wealth, and the facilitators who launder money, evade sanctions, intimidate dissidents or buy property on its behalf. Member states’ national parliaments can make the case, loudly and often, that they are overdue.
Third, use the power of the purse. Parliament shares authority over the EU budget. It can fund the Internet tools that keep Iranians online when the regime pulls the plug, so that 90 million people are never again cut off from the world.
Fourth, don’t let the brave people of Iran remain statistics. More than 100 protesters face execution. Lawmakers in several European parliaments have taken on individual prisoners as political sponsors, raising their names publicly and repeatedly. The regime hangs people one or two at a time because it believes no one is watching. Every MEP who sponsors a prisoner proves it wrong.
Fifth, work with us to facilitate defections from the regime. The transition we seek is not like the catastrophe of de-Baathification. Regime officials who defect and side with the people, will have a place in the future Iran. We have made progress here. Help us accelerate it.
Brussels has a special place in Iran's democratic story. More than a century ago, when Iranians wrote their first constitution, they looked to Belgium for a model. Belgium helped write the first chapter of Iranian democracy.
This week, in this city, Europe's lawmakers can help write the next. No dictatorship can stand forever against a united people determined to be free.
