Ingrid Betancourt: There Can Be No Peace with Tyranny—A Free Iran Will Be Achieved by Its People and Organized Resistance

Former Colombian Senator and presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt stated that the current situation in Iran demonstrates once again that the Iranian issue is far more than a nuclear dispute or a regional security challenge. It is fundamentally the struggle of a nation that has been deprived of freedom, dignity, and basic human rights for decades.

Betancourt said that the continued executions of political prisoners, the expansion of domestic repression, and attempts to silence voices of dissent both inside and outside Iran prove that the ruling clerical regime is incapable of reform. According to her, the regime survives through repression at home and intimidation abroad.

She also described the ban on the peaceful Iranian Resistance rally in Paris as a troubling development that contradicts Europe's democratic principles, stressing that freedom of expression and peaceful assembly must never become victims of political expediency.

Betancourt emphasized that decades of appeasement have only strengthened the regime, while military intervention alone cannot create democracy in Iran. The only sustainable solution, she argued, is to support the Iranian people's right to determine their own future and to recognize the organized democratic opposition as the legitimate force capable of leading a peaceful democratic transition.

She highlighted Maryam Rajavi's Ten-Point Plan as a comprehensive democratic roadmap based on free elections, separation of religion and state, gender equality, abolition of the death penalty, respect for human rights, and a non-nuclear Iran living peacefully with its neighbors and the international community.

Betancourt stressed that the international community should not reduce Iran to negotiations over nuclear or security issues while ignoring the millions of Iranians demanding freedom. Any agreement that fails to stop executions, free political prisoners, and protect fundamental human rights, she said, will remain incomplete and incapable of addressing the real roots of the crisis.

She added that the Iranian people, together with the Resistance Units across the country, have demonstrated extraordinary courage and resilience despite relentless repression, making them the regime's greatest source of fear.

Betancourt concluded that the international community now faces a historic moral choice: either continue failed policies of appeasement or stand with the Iranian people and their legitimate aspiration for democracy. She affirmed that lasting peace in the Middle East will not come through compromises with tyranny, but through supporting the Iranian people's struggle to establish a democratic republic—rejecting both the current theocracy and any return to monarchy—an approach embodied in the "Third Option" advocated by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.