As much of the global attention focuses on Ukraine, Iran's resistance, away from the news cameras. has also been active.

The Iranian Resistance held a conference entitled, "Ramadan, United Against Fundamentalism and Warmongering, for Peace and Tolerance," this past Monday, April 4, 2022.

The conference featured distinguished religious and political personalities from various countries and the Arab world. The online conference was held in connection with the PMOI members' conference in Ashraf-3 in Albania and at the headquarters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in France.

NCRI leader Maryam Rajavi opened the conference by extending her congratulations to Muslims and the global dignitaries on the advent of the holy month of Ramadan.

She then expounded on the current, distressful state of Iranian society and explained why the mullahs' regime is on "borrowed time."

Here are edited excerpts of her speech:

Dear friends of the Iranian People's Resistance, Fellow Compatriots,

At the outset of the holy month of Ramadan, I pray for the liberation of my compatriots from the clutches of religious tyranny. We pray that our Muslim sisters and brothers in the Middle East are freed from the clerical regime's fundamentalism, terrorism, and evil incitement to war. And we pray that people across the globe, especially the steadfast people of Ukraine, achieve peace and tranquility.

On the surface, Ramadan appears to mean abstaining from eating and drinking. In its essence, however, it is a call to awakening. It is the month of tipping the prevailing balance and embracing rebellion and transformation.

Iranian society's calamitous predicament

Truly, why are the Iranian people grappling with poverty and hunger despite our nation's abundance of wealth and resources? It is because an entirely illegitimate and detested regime preserves its power at the cost of people's lives, flesh, and blood.

Today, at least 70 percent of the country's population lives in intolerable and unprecedented poverty.

Every year, 1.2 million people attempt suicide (3) and 40,000 die. Some are forced to sell their body parts. Some destitute women sell their newborns for eight million rials or only $32.

In Iran today, per capita consumption of protein and dairy products is less than half the world's standard. (4) Families say they can no longer find bread and yogurt to eat.

More than five million innocent children have been driven to work for meager wages. At least 5,000 of them spend ten or more hours a day scavenging garbage so businessmen affiliated with Khamenei can profit several thousand trillion rials every year.

The number of people without adequate income and shelter grows daily.

In 2020, 490,000 homeless people sought refuge in Tehran's heated shelters. A year later, their number increased to 700,000. (5) More than a quarter of Iranians live in 3,000 slums. Current wages no longer provide for living expenses, medical care, or medicine. Displaced families sleep on rooftops or in canals, construction debris, garbage dumps, cemeteries, subways, and abandoned buildings (6).

Shame on Khamenei, the mullahs, and his cronies in the IRGC.

Khamenei's horrific policies

The Khamenei regime pursues five brutal policies: He forces many people to work without pay and crushes wages for the rest of Iran's labor force. He starves the vast majority of people. He plunders public wealth and properties, and drives people from their homes and the sick to death.

Yes, this is a dirty and cruel war against the Iranian people that arouses the wrath of God.

The coming democratic Islam

Yes, fulfilling one's pledges to God and the people in defending the rights and freedoms of the oppressed and achieving freedom, justice and equality is the greatest act of piety in our time.

This explains why the People's Mojahedin have been waging a struggle against the Shah and the mullahs for five decades. They have sacrificed their lives to overthrow the ruling religious fascism and establish freedom and popular sovereignty.

The mullahs' regime is now on borrowed time. No doubt, the religious tyranny, having failed in all intellectual and ideological spheres, will not survive in the face of this enormous force, the Resistance Units and the great Army of Freedom.

After its overthrow, the destiny of Iran will be at last be entwined with freedom, equality, and the separation of religion and state.

Image: NCRI, logo.