On Saturday, February 22, 2025, the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran hosted a conference to commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD 2025). The event gathered distinguished political leaders, human rights advocates, and supporters of the Iranian Resistance from over 80 countries.
Linda Chavez is a renowned author, commentator, and the former director of the White House office of public liaison.
A long-standing friend of the Iranian resistance movement and the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations, Linda Chavez delivered a speech at the IWD 2025 event in Paris, the text of which is presented below.
Hope for Iran: Linda Chavez Praises the Resistance Movement
Thank you. It is always a special honor to be here and to be with you, Madam Maryam Rajavi. I admire you. I have been watching you both from afar and close-up for many years now.
And, it is always a pleasure to be with you. But also, to see so many faces around the table that are old and familiar to me, but also, more importantly, the new faces that I’m seeing.
Because I think the importance of this movement is to bring in new people and instruct them. And of course, thank you to the brave people of Ashraf 3. I’ve been with you there in Ashraf, and I wish you well again.
The Mullahs Will Meet the Same Fate as Assad
As I listened to Madam Rajavi speak today. It was interesting because I was thinking how long I have known of this movement, really since almost from the beginning.
And then, to hear you talk about thirty years ago and how long it’s been. And I think when you have a resistance movement and it lasts not months or years, but decades, it’s very possible to get discouraged to say when will this ever end? When will we achieve our goals?
And so, it’s interesting to me to look back on the last year. Because last year when we were gathered together, we had in Syria a regime, a friend of the Mullahs. Bashar Al Assad, who had killed more than 600,000 of his own people, who had displaced millions around the world, who was helping, support the mullahs. And the mullahs in return helping support international terrorism that resulted in the massacre, by Hamas, on October 7, and the massacre of people in Ukraine who are being bombed by Iranian drones, by the day.
And so, you know, I look back and I say, well where is Bashar al Assad today? He has been driven from Syria with his tail between his legs and been embraced by the butcher of Moscow, Vladimir Putin.
And I thought to myself, you know, thinking about that, Bashar al Assad was not the first of the Syrian dictators. His father preceded him and that struggle went on for decades.
The Power of the Iranian People on the Path to Freedom
And so, I look to the struggle that you were involved in and I see hope. Maybe next year, it will be the mullahs with their tails between their legs going to whatever dictator will take them.
But that can only happen not by dictates from leaders outside. It is not going to come, you know, President Trump made some remark about bombing Iran to smithereens if they wouldn’t give another nuclear deal.
That is not the way change is going to come to Iran. It is going to come from the people of Iran rising up and choosing their own leader.
(Maryam Rajavi) has created a 10-point plan, which frankly, I think took inspiration from the bill of rights in the American constitution, because it protects all of the civil and political and religious rights of individuals within the country.
And she wants to take that to the Iranian people. We’re here to celebrate women’s history month and the role of women in national politics.
Victory of Equal Rights for Women
I can think of no more fitting representation of the victory of equal rights for women than to take a regime which has been the most misogynistic anti-woman regime in modern history and replace it by one led by a woman.
It is interesting because you know, in the outside world we hear lots of interest in what’s going to happen in Iran. And some people are, you know, thinking well, maybe we need to go back to a Shah.
We need to go back to a king. And it’s been interesting because, Mr. Pahlavi has in fact been going around the world, around the country in The United States and elsewhere and trying to draw crowds together.
And I found it amusing that recently in Switzerland, I think he was able to pull together 200 people. Have we ever seen such a puny crowd to supposedly put a king again in place?
I don’t think the people of Iran want to go back to the SAVAK. I don’t think they want to go back to the kind of torture, the kind of repression, the kind of thievery of the people’s wealth that was represented in the Pahlavi family. I think they want a chance to be able to choose their own leader. And I believe that leader is with us here today.
Next year, if we have this gathering, I hope that we will say that it was not just Assad who fled his country with his tail between his legs, but Khamenei and the mullahs who flee Tehran.
Thank you very much.
