Major U.S. figures join call for regime change in Tehran

June 17, 2015- Published on The Washington Times

Tens of thousands of Iranian opposition exiles gathered in France last weekend for an annual rally demanding regime change in Iran and condemning President Obama’s push to sign a nuclear accord with the Islamic republic.

The gathering was led by the Iranian exile organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and drew dozens of current and former officials from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East who joined in the call for Iran’s Shiite Islamist government to be overthrown.

Among the more high-profile figures was Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, who told the massive crowd in a prerecorded video message that “the Iranian regime [is] the true epicenter of Islamic extremism in the world.”

Despite participating in nuclear negotiations with Western powers, Iran’s leadership “continues to fund terror and incite chaos and in its campaign for domination in the vacuum of American withdrawal,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee told the gathering.

Event organizers said more than 100,000 supporters were on hand, with hundreds of buses ferrying in activists from across France and beyond to fill a fairground and convention center in the town of Villepinte, just north of Paris.

Several U.S. lawmakers were there in person. Among them was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, who drew large cheers by declaring that he wanted to “remind the brutal mullahs in Iran that their day is coming, and it will come soon.”

“I see a day coming when thugs riding motorcycles will not beat people up in the streets in order to silence them in Iran,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. “I see a day when women asking for rights will no longer be thrown in jail and beaten and raped in Iran. I see a day when the mullahs will not be choosing the candidates.”

He said the nuclear negotiations with Iran distract from what should be a Western policy backing the Iranian government’s overthrow.

The left-wing, secular umbrella organization includes more than 300 opposition groups peppered across 24 nations, members say. It sided with other revolutionary groups in overthrowing the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran in 1979, but broke with Islamist forces under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the years after the shah was overthrown. Leaders said the group has since renounced violence.

On Saturday in Villepinte, France, hundreds of supporters waved blue flags emblazoned with NCRI’s leader Maryam Rajavi’s photo and chanted her name as she took the stage dressed in a blue outfit and headscarf.

A large screen behind her broadcast the slogans: “Regime Change in Iran” and “We can and we must.”

“Look at today’s Iran. Do you see any Iranians not longing for change? All of them feel the same pain and demand for change,” she told the crowd, asserting that her organization stands for “freedom, democracy and equality.”

Ahead of Saturday’s rally, Ms. Rajavi said in an interview with The Washington Times that the “circumstances are ripe for regime change” in Tehran. She blamed Washington and other Western governments for standing in the way by legitimizing the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei through the pursuit of a nuclear deal.

“Through their policy of appeasement and giving concessions to the regime, Western governments have served as an obstacle to the regime’s overthrow,” she said. “In the absence of Western assistance, this regime would have fallen by now.”

Ms. Rajavi’s anti-regime proclamations have long appealed to neoconservative Republicans as well as to some hawkish Democrats in Washington.

Tens of thousands of Iranian opposition exiles gathered in France last weekend for an annual rally demanding regime change in Iran and condemning President Obama’s push to sign a nuclear accord with the Islamic republic.

The gathering was led by the Iranian exile organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and drew dozens of current and former officials from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East who joined in the call for Iran’s Shiite Islamist government to be overthrown.

Among the more high-profile figures was Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, who told the massive crowd in a prerecorded video message that “the Iranian regime [is] the true epicenter of Islamic extremism in the world.”

Despite participating in nuclear negotiations with Western powers, Iran’s leadership “continues to fund terror and incite chaos and in its campaign for domination in the vacuum of American withdrawal,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee told the gathering.

Event organizers said more than 100,000 supporters were on hand, with hundreds of buses ferrying in activists from across France and beyond to fill a fairground and convention center in the town of Villepinte, just north of Paris.

Several U.S. lawmakers were there in person. Among them was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, who drew large cheers by declaring that he wanted to “remind the brutal mullahs in Iran that their day is coming, and it will come soon.”

“I see a day coming when thugs riding motorcycles will not beat people up in the streets in order to silence them in Iran,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. “I see a day when women asking for rights will no longer be thrown in jail and beaten and raped in Iran. I see a day when the mullahs will not be choosing the candidates.”

He said the nuclear negotiations with Iran distract from what should be a Western policy backing the Iranian government’s overthrow.

The left-wing, secular umbrella organization includes more than 300 opposition groups peppered across 24 nations, members say. It sided with other revolutionary groups in overthrowing the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran in 1979, but broke with Islamist forces under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the years after the shah was overthrown. Leaders said the group has since renounced violence.

On Saturday in Villepinte, France, hundreds of supporters waved blue flags emblazoned with NCRI’s leader Maryam Rajavi’s photo and chanted her name as she took the stage dressed in a blue outfit and headscarf.

A large screen behind her broadcast the slogans: “Regime Change in Iran” and “We can and we must.”

“Look at today’s Iran. Do you see any Iranians not longing for change? All of them feel the same pain and demand for change,” she told the crowd, asserting that her organization stands for “freedom, democracy and equality.”

Ahead of Saturday’s rally, Ms. Rajavi said in an interview with The Washington Times that the “circumstances are ripe for regime change” in Tehran. She blamed Washington and other Western governments for standing in the way by legitimizing the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei through the pursuit of a nuclear deal.

“Through their policy of appeasement and giving concessions to the regime, Western governments have served as an obstacle to the regime’s overthrow,” she said. “In the absence of Western assistance, this regime would have fallen by now.”

Ms. Rajavi’s anti-regime proclamations have long appealed to neoconservative Republicans as well as to some hawkish Democrats in Washington.