(23 Jun 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Manza - 23 June 2022
1. Various of former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen, with and the leader of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), Maryam Rajavi, entering the hall amidst applauding
2. MEK members waving Iranian flags and applauding
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Maryam Rajavi, leader of MEK:
"The Iranian resistance is a historical example of the fact that the resistance of a nation can change the course of history towards freedom. Today we see this experience in Ukraine. Indeed, if the people of Ukraine themselves had not taken up arms, what was their guarantee to protect their country?"
4. Pence and his wife Karen listening to Rajavi
5. Pence waiting to take the floor
6. Various of MEK members applauding during Pence's speech
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Mike Pence, former U.S. Vice President:
"We're proud and grateful for our Iranian American community. But along with them, our hearts are with those that were left behind, for whom life has been a misery and a hardship day in and day out in ways that you understand that we never fully will. But you witness here at Ashraf-3, your voice in the world stage is more important than ever before. What the Iranian people have endured since 1979 will be recorded by history as one of the great tragedies of the modern era."
8. Various of MEK members applauding Pence
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Mike Pence, former U.S. vice president,
"A renewed deal with Iran won't block Iran's path to a nuclear bomb, it will pave a path in gold. And a renewed Iran nuclear deal won't benefit the people of Iran in any way. It will merely empower and enrich a corrupt regime that has tormented and tortured the Iranian people for generations."
10. Various of Mike Pence, Karen Pence and Rajavi leaving the hall
11. Mike Pence, Karen Pence and Rajavi, visit the museum of the Iranian dissidents' martyrs
12. Pence sets a wreath for the dead Iranian dissidents
13. Mike Pence, Karen Pence and Rajavi in front of photos of the Iranian martyrs listening to a guide
STORYLINE:
Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday denounced the Iranian regime and urged the Biden administration not to renew a nuclear deal with Tehran, saying it would embolden Iran's leadership.
Pence flew 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from his home in Indiana to Albania to visit the Ashraf-3 camp that is home to some 3,000 Iranian dissidents from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, best known as MEK.
Speaking at the camp near a small hill town 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Albania's capital, Tirana, Pence harshly denounced Tehran for brutality, poverty and corruption.
He also visited the camp's museum on what it describes as the death or execution of up to 120,000 Iranians since the Islamist regime came to power in 1979.
The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq began as a Marxist group opposing the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
It supported the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but soon had a falling out with Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and turned against his clerical government, carrying out a series of assassinations and bombings in the Islamic Republic.
The MEK later fled into Iraq and backed dictator Saddam Hussein during his bloody eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, leading many people in Iran to oppose the group. Although now largely based in Albania, the group claims to operate a network inside Iran.
Pence hailed the time of his governing with former President Donald Trump when they canceled the Iran nuclear deal, mentioning the sanctions imposed on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard and bringing Iran's oil exports to near zero.
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