Of the NCR's 570 members, 542 members participated in the eight-day session, which came to an end this morning in Baharestan Hall. The Iranian Resistance's President-elect Maryam Rajavi, as well as the chairpersons of the Council's 25 committees and the NCR's representatives in different countries attended the session.
The 12-point resolution was ratified by the Council after it heard a comprehensive report by NCR President Massoud Rajavi.
The resolution read in part: "The escalation of the power struggle among the clerical regime's factions is a result of the Iranian people's irreconcilable conflict with the ruling religious dictatorship. With its political and military blows, the Iranian Resistance has caused a schism in this regime, depriving it of any future and bringing it to a deadlock."
The NCR resolution added: "Two years into Khatami's presidency, the regime's two main factions would prefer to contain the crises facing them and maintain the status quo until the next presidential election in 2001. But in the absence of a political solution inside the regime and with the situation spiraling out of control, the conflict between the two factions will have to be settled definitively and violently before that deadline."
The NCR resolution declared that "the clerical regime is in the stage of being overthrown." The resolution added: "The unraveling of the regime after its leadership became a troika has more than ever before activated the social base of the organized resistance movement and this, in conjunction with the NCR, has sounded the death knells for the mullahs' regime."
The parliament-in-exile's session reviewed the Resistance's activities in the political, military, social and international domains in the past Iranian year (which ended on March 21). It pointed out that the "all-round leap achieved in all these areas by the Resistance is another sure sign that the downfall of the religious dictatorship has begun."
The resolution also noted that the courageous attacks by Resistance combatants inside Iran on the principal centers of repression has sent tremors through the entire regime. These included attacks on the Ministry of Intelligence, the central command headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, as well as the punishment of the infamous Assadollah Lajevardi, nicknamed the "Butcher of Evin Prison", and Deputy Chief of Staff of the mullahs' armed forces Sayyad Shirazi, the "Butcher of Kurdistan" and the murderer of many Mojahedin.
All the Council's members concurred that the yardstick for reform is the clerical regime's acceptance of a free election, something this medieval regime cannot tolerate. The National Council of Resistance once again stressed that the National Liberation Army of Iran is the main instrument for the overthrow of the mullahs' regime and establishment of democracy and popular sovereignty. The NCR members unanimously declared that "if the mullahs and their allies are true to their words, they can try their luck against the National Council of Resistance in a free election supervised by the United Nations. The Iranian Resistance is able to face every test for a peaceful confrontation, including a general referendum or free elections which are backed by strong international guarantees. It is the clerical regime, however, which will never surrender to this.
Any political reform will inevitably lead to the overthrow of this regime in its entirety. Khatami's two-year record as well as the continuing human rights violations, discrimination against and suppression of women, aggravation of poverty, unemployment, inflation, and the recent wave of political murders which the regime has tried to cover up are among the facts attesting to this reality.
The resolution also emphasized that "the unraveling of the clerical regime in its final stages is not a sign of reform or opening. Khatami's gang has shown that it, too, is neither interested in, nor capable of, bringing about political reform. The real intention behind this gang's fake and demagogic claims to reform and its talk of Ôcivil society and rule of law' is to prolong the rule of the clerical regime and slice out a bigger share of power for itself."
The resolution offered an appraisal of acts of protest by different sections of society, especially women and young people, noting in particular the heroic uprisings in different cities in Iranian Kurdistan in March. It noted that the people of Iran have no illusions about this regime and use every opportunity to express their dissent, thereby paving the way for the overthrow of the mullahs' regime.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 15, 1999
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