Thousands march in Paris to demand regime change in Tehran
Thousands of exiled Iranian opposition supporters have marched through central Paris demanding regime change in Tehran.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) staged their show of strength on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution that toppled the shah. Crowds waved posters of their leader Maryam Rajavi and the group’s founder Massoud Rajavi, her husband.
Security was tight during the rally and march through the French capital’s Left Bank. The group’s annual rally last summer was targeted by an Iranian bomb plot, which was thwarted by police raids and arrests. An Iranian diplomat from the country’s embassy in Austria is under arrest in Belgium, where police found explosives and a detonator in the car of a couple of Iranian origin.
“As long as we’re dealing with the main state sponsor of terrorism, there is a concern ... but that will never stop us,” group spokesman Shahin Gobadi said.
A speaker at the rally, the veteran former French senator Jean-Pierre Michel, 80, said: “I’m not a fan of Donald Trump, but I think the United States is right about Iran.” He criticized European states for helping Tehran to find a way round US sanctions.
Michel also praised the NCRI for
Shaving a woman at its head who wanted democracy in a future Iran, and he said he hoped one day to visit Tehran with Maryam Rajavi. “It keeps me alive,” he said.
Another speaker, former European Parliament Vice President Alejo Vidal- Quadras, told the rally: “Today the regime is ever more isolated on the international scene, and the pressure is mounting on the mullahs because of their terrorism and their launch of ballistic missiles, as well as financing terrorist groups in the region.
“I call on the EU to take a hard line with this theocratic and terrorist regime, which has no future.”