Speech at the premiere of the movie 77 Hours on October 18, 2026
Distinguished listeners, dear Iranian community in Finland and friends of freedom,
This film shows how Islamic ideology transforms an entire society. This is where it leads at its worst. The Islamic Republic has been and is a half-century-long nightmare that still continues.
This film awakens the Finns and the entire Western world to reality.
All the atrocities and what the regime did, especially on January 8th and 9th, cannot be squeezed into a few sentences. But what has been done is visible in this film.
In Iranian civilization, the ruler and the law have represented justice and order—unlike the Islamist dictatorship. Persia was once a rich center of culture and civilization. The Arab conquest 1400 years ago and the 1979 Islamic revolution changed the direction of the entire society.
The history of Iran teaches us that freedom and democracy must be defended before it is too late.
Now the Iranians are taking back the freedom that was cruelly stolen from them 47 years ago. In this very room, there are many people who have fled Islamism and religious oppression.
Threats and pressure also extend here to Finland and all Western countries, even though the Iranian regime cannot commit the same horrors here that we saw depicted in the film shown.
Here and elsewhere in Europe, we are not yet at the same point as Iran was around 1979, but Islamization is slowly creeping in through doors and windows into Europe and here into Finland as the demographic base changes rapidly.
We Finns know what it feels like to live next to an unpredictable and violent tyranny.
Sacrifices have been made here too for freedom, which sometimes seem to have been forgotten by some of our compatriots when looking at modern attitudes. Iran's historical lesson is highly relevant in Europe.
Islamist political ideology exploits the political freedoms offered by democracy and thereby erodes Western free democracy and civil society from within.
We see signs of this in Europe every day.
Efforts are actively being made to change society's values, rules, and structures to be pro-Islam by utilizing Western democratic processes.
Unfortunately, there are many useful idiots whom Islamists in Europe ruthlessly exploit. There are useful idiots right up to European state leadership and, for example, many in the European Parliament, where a resolution against the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamization was recently adopted.
167 useful idiots in the European Parliament voted against this resolution. That is quite a lot in a parliament with 720 members.
Since last December, the people of Iran have set an example of how to fight for freedom.
In Iran, after half a century of nightmare, it is time to move from darkness to light. I am convinced that we are living through a historical turning point—this time is a time of change.
Iranians have continually risen up to oppose their country's Islamist tyranny. However, the regime has suppressed every attempt at change with violence. The civilized Western world can no longer remain a passive bystander.
The slaughter that has been practiced in Iran year after year cannot be accepted. The time for negotiations is over. Europe has played itself out by negotiating for years with an Islamist regime that has used negotiations solely as a pawn to buy time for itself and seek new opportunities to act against the Western system.
The Islamist tyranny in Iran is the enemy of the Iranians, the Finns, and all freedom-loving nations.
Iran's new generation will make its revolution itself, but our duty is to support them. A regime that fears its own citizens and has to resort to terror abroad has reached the end of the road. It is only a matter of time before it collapses.
It is a joy and an honor to stand here today on the side of truth and light, supporting the revolution of the Lion and the Sun as a free Finn and a friend of the Iranians. It is time to move from darkness to light.
There is hope.
Messages from inside Iran instill belief that change is inevitable.
In Ă¢kharin nabardeh, Pahlavi barmigarde!
Long live a free Iran!
Thank you very much!
