אפחד

The text of my full remarks to @israeliamerican: Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I would like to begin by thanking Dr. Adelson, Mr. Carr and their team for convening such an important conference at such an important time. Today we are on the precipice of history, not only for our nations and our people but for civilization. We find ourselves on this precipice in the middle of a fortnight that is crudely illustrative of exactly what is at stake: just days removed from the second anniversary of the murder of Mahsa Amini and the slaughter of hundreds of Iranian protesters and days from the first anniversary of October 7th and the mass-murder of hundreds of Israeli civilians. These crimes, these violations of basic dignity, these insults to humanity happened hundreds of miles away from one another. The victims were from different nations, shared different faiths, and spoke different languages. Different men pulled the triggers, wielded the clubs, and plunged the knives. But the culprit in each was the Islamic Republic and the man at its bloody helm, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. These two terrible anniversaries in between which we find ourselves, however, are not stand alone events. In the 1980’s the Islamic Republic and its proxies murdered Lebanese Jewish leader Isaac Saason, bombed the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, and mass executed Iran’s military officers, statesmen, and Jewish leaders like Habib Elghanyan. In the 1990’s the Islamic Republic and its proxies bombed the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires killing dozens of civilians, bombed the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, murdered former Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, and killed dozens of dissident writers in a series of chain murders across Iran and abroad. In the first decade of the millenia, the Islamic Republic and its proxies rained missiles down on Israel, launched a global campaign of Holocaust denial, murdered American soldiers, and rained bullets on Iranian freedom fighters like Neda Agha Soltan in the Green Movement. In the 2010’s the Islamic Republic and its proxies attempted to bomb Israeli embassies in Georgia, India, and Thailand, announced their intention to assassinate President Donald Trump, and slaughtered more than 1,500 peaceful protesters fighting for Iran’s liberation. To this day, the Islamic Republic and its proxies fire missiles at Israeli civilians and American soldiers and fire buckshot into the eyes of Iranian protesters. They bomb Israeli playgrounds, poison the minds of American students, and poison Iranian schoolhouses. They target your synagogues and they raid our house churches. Yet in the face of this, we have witnessed the remarkable solidarity between the Iranian, American, and Israeli people. At the post-October 7th rallies, in cities around the world, waving in the wind and shining in the sun we saw the Stars and Stripes, the Star of David, and the Lion and Sun, the ancient and eternal Iranian flag, flying proudly side by side. The Iranian people stand with Israelis and Americans because before the Islamic Republic came for you, it came for us. Ours is a shared experience. We know your struggle. My friends, you in Israel are under siege. War is being waged on you from the south, from the north, from the east, and from a propaganda war in the West. All of this is being coordinated, supported, and directed by the Islamic Republic. Reacting to each of these threats independently, as if they were independent threats, will leave you in a state of perpetual vulnerability. Merely fighting Hamas or Hezbollah will not deliver security for Israel or America. You will be simply reacting and your people will never have peace. The time of reacting to these reactionaries must come to an end. Iranians, too, tried to deal with this regime. They tried to reform it. It was under these “reformists” that the most brutal massacres of my compatriots took place. So trust us when we say no deal can be made with such a regime and no accommodation with its proxies. Trust us when we say that a regime that imports Hezbollah terrorists to murder its own citizens will never, ever give up its jihad against you. Rising antisemitism is taking enough lives on its own. But the twentieth century showed us that when that hateful ideology is backed by a regime that seeks to enforce it through violence, it is considerably more dangerous. So it is time to say enough is enough. It is time to draw a red line. Sadly that red line had to be drawn with the blood of innocent civilians– our Nika and your Shani, our Pouya and your Hersh. The only path to honor their sacrifices, to prevent more innocent victims, and to bring peace for Israel, America, the Arab world, and my compatriots in Iran is to send the Islamic Republic to the ash heap of history once and for all. But how? My friends, in the past year Iranians and Israelis have stood in solidarity. But solidarity is no longer sufficient. Now it is time to do more than stand side by side, it is time to act hand in hand. As we stand on this precipice together, the question I put before you today is simple. Are you ready to do more than stand together– are you ready to act together? The people of Iran have made their stance clear. They are fighting against this regime every day and they are doing it with no support from the outside world. They have sent me here with a message: they are not only fighting to free themselves, but to free the Middle East and the world from the scourge of this evil regime. As they fight this fight against the Islamic Republic for all of us, do not leave them to fight alone. The people of Iran are your partners, not pawns. Pawns are expendable. My people are not. What we need in this partnership is beyond photo-ops, rallies, and social media posts. What we need is a collaborative, coordinated campaign. We need to reinstate maximum pressure on the Islamic Republic. We need to offer maximum support to the people of Iran. And we need to facilitate maximum defections from the regime so that we can peacefully transition from this criminal dictatorship to the secular democracy the Iranian people are fighting for. This requires leadership in the United States, in Israel, and an Iranian partner. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to offer that partnership and extend a hand as a partner in peace. It is through this partnership, through this coordinated action, that we can achieve freedom for the people of Iran, security for Israel, the United States, the Arab world, and a true opportunity for a bright future for the Palestinians. If we fail to act and the Islamic Republic remains in power, none of that will be possible. But if we work together, we can secure prosperity and dignity for our people and stability and security for our world and expand from the Abraham Accords to the Cyrus Accords. As we stand on the precipice of history, we do so united in our values and our vision. But now it is time to act. And when the Lion and Sun rises again, the world will see a new dawn of peace. Thank you.

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