Iranian opposition coalition leader calls for ‘regime change’
Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran — a coalition of dissident Iranian groups — told European lawmakers on Wednesday that only “regime change by the people of Iran and the organized resisters” can ensure regional peace.
Israel’s Friday surprise attack, Rajavi said, represents “the beginning of a critical new chapter, both in Iran’s internal crisis and the broader dynamics of the region.”
Rajavi also appeared to criticize Iranian monarchists who have rallied around opposition leader Reza Pahlavi — the son of former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was deposed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution — who in recent days has called on Iranians to rise up against the government in Tehran.
“An alternative cannot be imposed from above, as was done a century ago when Britain installed a monarchy by appointment,” Rajavi told lawmakers on Wednesday. “Nor can it be forced on the people like the 1953 coup d’état by the United States against the nationalist government of [former Prime Minister Mohammad] Mosaddegh.”
“Had there been a legitimate nationalist and democratic government, the course of Iran’s history — and indeed the fate of this region — would have been profoundly different,” she said.
“Neither the shah, nor the mullahs,” Rajavi added. “The people of Iran will accept no form of dictatorship and demand freedom.”
The NCRI has been recognized as the political arm of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran — known as the MEK — which was a leftist revolutionary organization in Iran that fought a guerrilla war against the last shah and, after the 1979 revolution, the theocratic regime.
The NCRI has notable supporters among traditional Iran hawks in the U.S., with figures including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser John Bolton and others having spoken at their events in recent years.
The NCRI has called for the establishment of a democratic and secular republic in Iran. The MEK — and by extension the NCRI — were recognized as terrorist organizations by the U.S. until 2012.
- Tags: mullahs' regime, NCRI, people of Iran, Uprising
