Several thousand Iranians on Saturday came from across Europe to rally in Paris, calling on world leaders to put greater pressure on the Islamic republic’s ruling clerics.
“Instead of appeasing the mullahs, [the international community] should stand side by side with the Iranian people,” National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) president Maryam Rajavi told the rally.
The group is the political wing of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, which Tehran regards as a “terrorist” group.
Photo: Reuters
Iran’s opposition abroad has been emboldened by the fall late last year of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a longtime ally of Tehran.
“As Syria did with Bashar al-Assad, the Iranian people will free themselves of the mullahs, and it will be in 2025,” former Belgium prime minister Guy Verhofstadt said.
“The strategy of complacency has to change,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen that way with the US administration this time,” he added.
“The Iranian regime will fall like the Syrian regime fell, at a speed that no one would have predicted,” former Syrian rebel leader Riad al-Asaad told the crowd by video link.
Several speakers at Saturday’s rally voiced hopes that US President Donald Trump’s promise to exert “maximum pressure” against Tehran would help their cause.
Trump has in the past lashed out at Tehran’s nuclear program, but has also expressed a desire to reach a peace deal with Iran.
On Friday, the Islamic republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned against negotiations with the US.
“You should not negotiate with such a government, it is unwise, it is not intelligent, it is not honorable to negotiate,” Khamenei told a meeting of military top brass.
In Paris, Rajavi told the rally that the Iranian government’s “cascade of failures” had “pitted the regime’s internal factions against each other over the question of whether or not to negotiate with the United States.”
Police put the turnout at the Paris demonstration at about 6,000.
The throng was decked out in the flags of the NCRI, a lion holding a sword against a green, white and red backdrop, with a sprinkling of a few Ukrainian flags here and there.
“Many of the weapons which are killing our children in Ukraine come from Iran,” said Lara, a Ukrainian living in the German town of Kassel who was bussed into the French capital by the NCRI.
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