On April 4, 2025, the National Conference for Resistance of Iran (NCRI) U.S. office in Washington, D.C., hosted a vibrant Nowruz celebration, marking the Persian New Year with a gathering of distinguished guests, Iranian-Americans, and bipartisan American dignitaries. The event underscored the NCRI’s ongoing efforts to promote freedom, democracy, and human rights in Iran, as highlighted in a speech by a representative of the NCRI U.S. office. The celebration reflected hope and solidarity, with warm wishes for joy, hope, and prosperity extended to the people of Iran and advocates of democracy in the U.S., emphasizing the shared vision for a free and democratic Iran.
Remarks by Mayor Rudy Giuliani
This is a great celebration and it’s wonderful to see my old friends. We spent so much time together on this cause, which I want to thank Madam Rajavi, MEK, for allowing me to be part of this, which I think goes back to 2009. So it’s a long time and it’s probably one of the most satisfying things I’ve done that makes me feel good about myself. And that’s why I urge all of you to participate in it.
I don’t know if there’s much that you can do that is more important than trying to help people obtain freedom. I think it’s a great honor if you can have the opportunity to do that. And if you have the capacity to do it and you pass it up, you’re making a very big mistake.
To me, this is probably the biggest single example in the world, certainly in the world that we’re aware of, of long-term deprivation of human rights, human dignity, that’s had a tremendous impact on the world. I’m sure most of you would agree with me that we’re just not going to have peace in the Middle East until the Ayatollah is gone and the regime of terror is gone, because they won’t allow it. And it’s been a, all of the attempts at peace in the Middle East, particularly what I always regarded as a fool’s errand, which is a two-state solution. And the day I heard that, and I can’t remember when that was, probably in the early 90s, I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I mean, why would you have a solution and have as a neighbor a country that’s dedicated to your eradication? You’d have to be suicidal.
But that maintained, even now there are people who accept it. But if you attempted to bring peace to the Middle East, avoiding that, how could Saudi Arabia possibly make peace with the reign of terror being able to activate their street, activate the terrorists? They’re afraid enough without it, witt that it becomes impossible. So we’re destined to have all kinds of conflicts in the middle of that most important part of the world if the reign of terror remains. They become a very, very important instrument for China, for Russia, for North Korea.
I don’t know and I don’t understand the reluctance of my government for so long to really eradicate them. There’s plenty of cause to do that from the time they took the hostages until now. I understand the influence of communism, I understand the influence of Marxism, I understand the influence of the Red Chinese government, which is way greater than we ever thought, but I really don’t understand why we’ve supported the reign of terror as much as we have.
I really do think over the last four years we were their biggest financial contributor in the United States of America. I’m trying to figure out who gave them more money. Of course, you know, the idea is we gave them, we gave them back their money, money that we had seized. But that money was seized from a dictator and it was supposed to go back to a government that was free. So we seized it from a horrible, maniacal, homicidal dictator, the Shah, And then we gave it back to an even worse one. And a lot of that money was used, oh gosh, back in ’15 and ’16 and ’17 to kill Americans. I mean, there are American parents that don’t have a son or a daughter because of “Solaimani”, the Quds Force and they still sit there doing it to us. Someday I’ll understand what the infiltration was and where that kind of betrayal of America, where that took place.
But right now, we are at a very special time. I don’t know that Iran has ever been weaker. They’re almost all by themselves now. They had Hezbollah. Hezbollah was, just a year ago, by far and without any doubt, the most well-equipped terrorist group in the world. Oh my gosh, if Israel ever went to war with them, it’d be over. And America better watch out. The Houthis were impregnable. Hamas always was more questionable as a really effective terrorist group. But when you add the Hezbollah and the Houthis and the Assad government, which almost was part of the Iranian empire, a year ago at this time, Iran looked like a very, very formidable empire. It doesn’t look that way anymore, does it?
Hamas is begging for a ceasefire and the people of Palestine are rebelling against it. And it’s virtually gone except for a few people left that aren’t going to probably be there in a month or two.
Hezbollah, I never saw a terrorist group disappear so quickly. I’m not even sure Netanyahu fired at them. I think he just went “pfff” and they all ran away.
Assad wouldn’t even, Assad saw that and he ran away. I mean these were great strong allies they had. And now the Houthis, I have no doubt that President Trump wants to wipe them out completely because of his anger that they got away with killing so many people and wounding so many Americans and we did absolutely nothing about it except I think we twice hit empty fields. The Hooties attacked us 170 times. Americans. We attacked them three times. Real protection for our troops, huh? But they’re pretty much worth nothing.
And now it’s Iran all by itself. She still ran, all by herself. The proxies are gone. They’ve been stripped away. And I don’t know when. I don’t know exactly how. I’m very encouraged by the fact that we moved one quarter of our U .S. Air Force B-2 bombers to within range. I can’t imagine they’re there for just getting a few extra hours of flying. Their capacity to carry 30,000, 40,000 pounds is remarkable. We’ve moved three times more fighters there than we ever had before. And on the way is another carrier group to supplement the one that we have there, to make sure that we can defend ourselves, our soldiers, our interests, Israel, and our allies.
I can’t imagine that’s all for nothing, but we’ll have to see. But at some point, there’s going to be the necessity to replace the Ayatollah, and I think it’s going to happen this year.
And Madam Rajavi and all of you in different ways and for a long period of time have worked on that and dreamed about it and thought about it. Now it’s a realistic possibility.
And believe it or not, I have only one real remaining fear, and it’s the confusion that could be created by the son of the Shah. Because I get that question all the time. I find it ludicrous because I never, I can’t think of a group of people that liberated themselves from a dictatorship and created a monarchy. But somehow a lot of people don’t know the history of the Shah. And because he wasn’t as completely evil as the group that followed him, some people think he was acceptable. But of course, if you take away the two ayatollahs who turn out to be two of the most maniacal killers in the history of the world, he was also a maniacal killer and a really inadequate human being, a weakling, a coward, and a massive thief. His son is a perfect example of genetic deterioration, serious genetic deterioration. And he was genetically deteriorated from his father, the last Shah.
So I think it’s really necessary that people learn the history of the Shah, with the secret police, the prisons, the torture, the massive, massive corruption and theft. And this is like going from maybe not bad to worse, but from bad to just about as bad, and for all of the effective things that are necessary, like free speech and the ability to lead your own life and freedom of religion, it’s the same thing.
So I think one of the things we can accomplish is to educate during this period of time where we’re waiting, educate the American people on who this person is. Because they’re not educated about it. American people are going to be faced one morning, and I told you, I think in the next year with a massive conflagration in Iran, it should have the effect of dislodging the regime because it’s on its last legs anyway. And then the next question is, what’s next? And I think we should get ready for that more seriously than we ever had before because after all this time, you don’t want any confusion about that.
And usually, we make terrible mistakes. I mean, we replaced Assad with a terrorist group that’s now massively killing Christians. Are they a little better than Assad? Maybe, but not for the thousands of Christians that they’ve killed and continue to kill. And I don’t think we know what to do about it. So it’s very easy for us to topple him and then have the wrong people there, when in fact the right people are ready. And they’ve been attacked a lot, demonized a lot. The campaign of the regime against you or us has been remarkable. Only probably exceeded by some place like Red China.
So that means there’s an educational effort that’s going to be necessary to make sure that we, that you win the final battle, which is not only the battle of dislodging the Ayatollah, but the battle for, not the world opinion, American opinion. The rest of the world isn’t going to matter what they think. It’s going to matter what Washington thinks. And we’ve got to make sure they’re thinking the right thing. So give my love to Madame Rajavi, who is maybe one of the most courageous and wonderful people I’ve ever met.
And it’s so good to see everyone here, Senator, gosh, all of you. And I’m really excited. You know, you dream about this, and now you actually see a reality. God bless you. Happy Nowruz. The last one of these I was at, they tried to kill me. Yeah, yeah, it was the one in Ashraf. When they came, they had the four people they arrested, and they were gonna ball us up, Madame Rajavi and I. And that’s when it, Eddie (Rama) was on your side and he prosecuted them and threw the ambassador out. Now, at least up until a few months ago, he might’ve helped them. But I have a feeling Eddie is going to want to suck up to Trump. Excuse the expression, but Eddie is a sucker-upper as well as other things that aren’t very good, but he’s our sucker-upper now and we got to use him.
Well, thank you very much and happy New Year.