Senator Joseph Lieberman addressed the grand gathering in Paris

             
                                        Senator Joseph Lieberman

Senator Lieberman served honorably and well in the US Senate for many years and with the Democratic Party he was a vice-presidential nominee in 2000.Sen. Lieberman:  I am honored to join you today in a great cause which is the cause of freedom and human rights and independence for the people of Iran. I am honored to stand at this podium after President-elect Rajavi. But, it’s not so easy to follow such a great speech. It was brilliant, it was honorable, it was visionary. Madam Rajavi, what a great leader, she set out a path to victory and gave us all a reasonable hope that we will succeed in liberating the people of Iran.
I am honored to be here and as we used to say in the United States Senate as a point of personal privilege, I am honored to be here with my wife, Pedesta Ester Lieberman. 
My friends, I want first to thank each of you in this massive crowd for the effort you have made to come here from all over the world to be part of this resistance. In doing so, I hope you know that you are not just attending another meeting. You have chosen to be part of history. Part of changing history and it is a long history of patriotic and courageous people who have fought for and achieved their freedom. It is a history that goes back if I my say so to the emancipation of the Jewish people from slavery in ancient Egypt. It’s the same fight that was waged by the brave Americans who won our independence through revolution in 18th century; to all the French patriots who fought for and won their freedom and their revolution in the 19th century; to the brave soldiers who defeated Nazism and fascism in the Second World War; to the heroic people whose revolutionary uprisings collapsed the Soviet Union in the 20th century; to the people in the Arab world who have risen up for their freedom and opportunity in our time.
By choosing to be here today, you join that history and advance it because you and we are engaged in a historic struggle to liberate the people of Iran, a great nation with a proud history, from the evil regime that is holding them hostage, and we will do it.
Madam Rajavi referred to the religious fundamentalists who are temporarily at the head of the Iranian government. They are religious but in the American view, they are leading a government that is profoundly sacrilegious. And they are doing that because they are denying the people of Iran the human rights to life, liberty and happiness that the American Declaration of Independence makes clear is the endowment of every individual on earth, not from the government, but from the God Almighty.
That is why the American revolutionaries in the 18th century, men like Jefferson and Franklin declared that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. And so, I say today to the people of Iran, the people to the resistance, and I say it also to the tyrants who today rule over Iran: never forget resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
In resisting the current regime in Iran, we must be realistic, we must not close our eyes to what they do, or our ears to what they say. It is a year now since the soft smile of Rouhani has replaced the threatening grimace of Ahmadinejad. But I ask you my friends, has anything else about the policies of Iran changed in the 1st year? (Crowd: NO) I couldn’t agree with you more. Iran under Rouhani continues to directly support mass murder of the innocent people of Syria. Iran under Rouhani continues to fund and train violent, murdering terrorists in the Middle East and beyond. Iran under Rouhani continues to insist on maintaining its nuclear capability, and the systems and weapons to deliver it.  Rouhani continues to punish, imprison Iranians who simply want to speak their minds, and it does more than that, as Madam Rajavi said so powerfully, in increasing numbers it kills the dissidents by hanging.
Iran under Rouhani continues to leave the people of Iran suffering economically from poverty and unemployment. And yet in spite of all that and as I say we can see it with our eyes, we can hear from our ears, there are those outside of Iran, including people in high places, who want to see Iran as they wish it would be, not as it is today, and I am afraid some of those are in the United States. Those who meet with the regime, who trust its representatives, who consider working with Iran in Iraq, deceive themselves; but more than that, they endanger the rest of us. Their hopes blind their eyes to the truth. Nothing has changed in Iran under Rouhani and Khamenei. They are the enemies of freedom, the enemies of American and the enemies of the people of Iran.
There is only one sure way to secure the world from the threat that this regime and Tehran represent: it is for the Iranian people to overthrow these tyrants, and for freedom loving people throughout the world to support this next great revolution.
You of the National Council of Resistance of Iran know all this and have fought valiantly and effectively to wake up the world’s leaders from their sleep and illusions before it is too late. I thank you for that, and I want to thank you as an American, for all you have done to enable America to have the intelligence necessary to protect our people and our allies from Iranian backed terrorism and Iranian backed nuclear weapons. We could not do it without your help.
So it is time for America to come to our values; America which we proudly called the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is time for us to give full support to the brave Iranians of the resistance, who are today fighting to be free. Remember the warning from Dante that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crises preserved their neutrality. There is a moral crisis in Iran today. There is a moral crisis at Camp Liberty in Iraq today, and for anyone, including particularly America, to remain neutral in the face of these moral crises is just plain wrong.
I want to say to you that the program of the National Council of Resistance of Iran is totally  consistent with American values. You are not just the enemy of our enemies. You are our friends, our allies, our brothers and sisters, our partners in the pursuit of freedom, human rights and the rule of law. The spread of freedom is our shared goal and it is our destiny, and I will tell you, as you can see by the extraordinary group of American leaders who are here today that support for the resistance is growing in America. As a matter of fact I said to one of my friends from America today that in Washington these days you don’t see this kind of partisan delegation that you see here in France in support of the resistance.
Now let me say finally, really to echo the moving words of Madam Rajavi. We know that the battle ahead will not be easy, but we will not surrender and I hope you will take comfort and encouragement from the words of the original freedom fighters in America, Thomas Payne, who said, “Tyranny is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
So, let us go forward from this extraordinary event, prepared to pay any price and bear any burden to assure the glorious triumph of liberty for the people of Iran that will make the world a better and safer place for us and our children.
Thank you and God bless you.