THE BRITISH COMMITTEE FOR IRAN FREEDOM

Thursday, 27 February 2025 Time: 10:30am-12pm

Attlee Suite, 1st Floor, Portcullis House

Iran’s future policy

More than 830 executions, almost 5 per day, have taken place since Masoud Pezeshkian took office as the so-called ‘moderate’ president of Iran last August. The frenzy of executions, aimed at quelling rising dissent in the rebellious population, has had the opposite effect. Unbridled brutality, suppression and intimidation have failed to extinguish the spark of revolution which now threatens to ignite the nation. Protests which began in Tehran university in mid-February, following the suspicious death of a 19-year-old student, have spread nationwide to other universities and are spilling out onto the streets. Students hold the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the regime’s Gestapo, and the thuggish Basij militia, responsible, chanting: “We fight, we die, we will take back Iran”.

The Iranian currency has halved in value since Pezeshkian took office, causing soaring inflation and impoverishing the majority of Iranians. At the time of the 1979 revolution which led to the overthrow of the hated Shah, the currency was valued at 74 rials to the US $. Today it is 940,000 rials to the US $. Pensioners, teachers, nurses, doctors, office workers, labourers and truck drivers are routinely seen joining the demonstrations, protesting about unpaid pensions, overdue wages, the broken economy, corruption and oppression. The protests have turned overtly political, with chants of: “This year is a year of blood, Khamenei will be overthrown.”

Weakened by the fall of their key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the effective decapitation of their proxy terrorist militias – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) in Iraq, the theocratic regime’s ‘axis of resistance’ is disintegrating. The 85-year-old fundamentalist Supreme Leader is acutely aware of the massive nationwide uprising that erupted following the death in custody of the young Kurdish girl Mahsa Amini in 2022. He knows the next insurrection will sound the death knell for his tyrannical regime and he is trembling with fear. He and his cohorts face trial in the international courts for crimes against humanity and human rights abuse after their 46 years of dictatorship, and he is indiscriminately using violent oppression as the last remaining tool in his toolbox, to cling onto power.

Brave Resistance Units of the main democratic opposition movement – the PMOI/MEK – have mounted courageous operations against the regime’s infrastructure, targeting incendiary attacks on Basij and IRGC compounds and other government centres. Banners, posters and graffiti proclaiming support for the MEK have appeared in towns and cities across Iran. State-controlled TV and radio broadcasts have been hacked into, displaying support for the MEK and calling for regime change. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its main component part the MEK, have repeatedly assured the West that they do not seek military intervention or boots on the ground in Iran. They simply look for moral support as they struggle to overthrow the world’s most evil dictatorship. The NCRI and its charismatic leader Mrs Maryam Rajavi have a ten-point plan that would restore freedom, justice, democracy, human rights, women’s rights, an end to the death penalty and an end to warmongering, terrorism and the nuclear threat. It is a platform I would be prepared to stand for election on.

But, as always, every time there is a whiff of revolution in the air, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah and the self-styled man who would be king, suddenly appears out of nowhere. Following the nationwide uprising in Iran in 2022/23, he jetted around the world proclaiming himself as the rightful successor to the mullahs’ theocratic tyranny. He’s been doing it again in the past month. The fact that millions protesting on the streets of Iran’s towns and cities are chanting “Down with the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Sheikh”, seems not to have caught his attention. The fact that the Iranian people want democracy and a secular republic, not an autocratic dictatorship like that of his father, has eluded him. Unbelievably, Pahlavi even boasted in an interview that he was in contact with senior elements of the IRGC. He said they would be needed to maintain order after the overthrow of the mullahs. This was like Winston Churchill suggesting he would retain the services of the SS after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945!

The Shah fled from Iran in 1979 with billions he had stolen from the Iranian people. Reza Pahlavi has lived on this plundered booty ever since, but, despite these massive financial resources, he has done nothing. He has failed to assemble any kind of significant support for the restoration of the monarchy. The Iranian people do not want to replace one dictatorship with another. They have learned that lesson. The EU, the UK, the UN, the US and President Donald Trump, should now move with speed to consult with Mrs Rajavi and the NCRI to achieve regime change and relieve 95 million Iranians from their oppression and suffering.