Middle East peace hinges on regime change in Iran

 As the Trump administration continues to overhaul and codify a  comprehensive new Iran strategy, the opposition coalition to the mullahs in Tehran held a massive rally on Saturday in the French capital calling for regime change.

An enormous crowd of participants joined hundreds of prominent dignitaries from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. The entire convention voiced exuberant support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its President Maryam Rajavi as the sole viable alternative for the Iranian regime.

Rajavi emphasized how her movement welcomed statements made during a recent U.S.-Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh.

“The ultimate solutions to the crisis in the region is the overthrow of the Iranian regime by the Iranian people,” she explained. “With [the recent presidential] election, the mullahs had intended to improve the regime’s situation. But they divided and destabilized the regime. Now, they are planning and threatening to oust Rouhani,” she added.

The NCRI President then emphasized on how her people continue to suffer from the mullahs’ regime, highlighting their main demand for an end to the mullahs’ rule. “Regime change is possible and within reach,” Rajavi said. “The Iranian society is simmering.”

The Iranian opposition leader’s call for the international to once and for all designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity received echoes by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and even elevated by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

 We have a different administration in Washington that has a different set of principles and a different way of looking at the world,” Giuliani said, considered by many as a Trump envoy. “And under the leadership of President Trump, I believe he can help us rid the Iranian people of the oppression that has subjected them for so long.”
Mr. Gingrich further energized the crowd by highlighting, “Iran must be free!” and condemning the mullahs’ atrocious record of human rights violations.
“And I believe that the commitment to take steps to help you help all free people everywhere will be clear in this administration, and the pressures will grow every single year in the direction of supporting 1,000 Ashraf so that we have a network of freedom prepared to take over from a dictatorship of death,” Gingrich emphasized.
In a reference to the American Revolution and independence on July 4th, Gingrich said, “In history, the name of your president elect, Maryam Rajavi, will go down in the same tradition of fighters for freedom as Washington, Lafayette and Garibaldi… This movement is going to be a movement that goes down in history as one of the great examples of human spirit defeating the evils of dictatorship.”
Former and current members of Congress from both sides of the aisle in the U.S., along with a very prominent Arab world figure, were among the many others also seeking regime change in Tehran.
“The Iranian people are the first victims of Khomeini’s dictatorship,” said former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal Faisal, also a former Saudi ambassador in the United States and the United Kingdom. “Your effort in challenging this regime is legitimate and your resistance for the liberation of the Iranian people of all ethnicities, including Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Turks and Fars of the mullahs’ evil, as Mrs. Rajavi said, is a legitimate struggle.”
Senator Joseph Lieberman reiterated Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
“I want to share with you a dream I have for the Middle East,” he said. “I have a dream paraphrasing Dr. King that all the people of that region, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Shiite and Sunnis, Israelis and Palestinians, will sit down together at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood and peace and freedom,” the senator said.
Those gathered in Paris shared that dream, Lieberman added, and regime change in Tehran is the sole method of realizing that dream.
All await the results of the Trump administration’s review of its all-out Iran policy as more voices make a strong appeal for regime change in Tehran.
Iran continues its flagrant human rights violations at home, fuels sectarian wars and terrorism across the region, and pursues a highly dangerous nuclear weapons/ballistic missile program. Recent revelations of extensive collaboration between Tehran and Pyongyang are adding to the growing list of international community concerns.
As Maryam Rajavi has emphasized time and again through her ongoing struggle, this solution requires not a new war in the already flashpoint Middle East. The Iranian people and their organized opposition movement are more than capable of ridding the world of Tehran’s criminal mullahs.
Such an objective would have been realized long ago if the West had not adopted a disastrous policy of appeasement vis-à-vis Iran. The end of the mullahs’ rule will be the prelude to a Middle East enjoying peace and security.
​Shahriar Kia is a political analyst and member of the Iranian opposition, the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, also known as the MEK).  He graduated from North Texas University.