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Iran Focus
 Washington, D.C., Jan. 20 – A vocal
demonstration was held outside the White House on Thursday by Iranian
Americans opposed to the current theocratic regime ruling Iran and seeking support for
democratic regime change.
Iranian Americans flocked the White House from across the United States to take part in the rally
organised by the Council for Democratic Change in Iran.
Waving tri-coloured Iranian flags and lifting colourful banners, the
demonstrators, estimated by organisers to be in the thousands, called on
the Bush Administration to support a “third option” for Iran. They rejected the West
appeasing Tehran over its nuclear ambitions but at the same
time they insisted they were opposed to a foreign military intervention in Iran.
“We support Maryam Rajavi’s
‘third option’. The West must support the Iranian people and their
Resistance to bring about democratic regime change in our homeland”, said
Mina Rafiee, a young Iranian woman who had
attended the protest and was holding Rajavi’s
portrait.
Maryam Rajavi is the
President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the
principle Iranian opposition coalition, whose largest group is the People’s
Mojahedin, or Mujahedin-e
Khalq (MeK).
One of the demonstrators’ main demands was the lifting of the name of the MeK from the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign
Terrorist Organisations.
The group’s name was placed in the FTO list in 1997 during the Clinton
Administration in what senior State Department officials described at the
time as a “goodwill gesture” to the newly-installed administration of
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.
Now, with the ascendancy of the Islamic Republic’s most radical
ultra-conservatives to power and the instalment of former Revolutionary
Guards commander Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
as President, the demonstrators demanded that the Bush Administration
remove the MeK’s name from the blacklist and
offer it political support to topple the theocratic government in power in
Iran.
Among the participants in Thursday’s rally which took place on Lafayette Park, were a number of Americans
including several whose relatives had been killed in terrorist attacks
carried out on Tehran’s orders.
Many of the Iranians who attended brought with them photos of their
relatives who had been executed in Iran for supporting the MeK’s cause.
Massoud Farahani-Davoudi
said that he had come to add his voice to others in the Iranian American
community seeking regime change in Iran.
“The U.S. should support the people in Ashraf City to bring an end to the
religious dictatorship ruling Iran”, Farahani-Davoudi
said, referring to the MeK’s Ashraf
base situated northeast of Baghdad.
Several U.S. Congressmen and Senators issued
statements of support for the rally’s objectives.
Congressman Bob Filner, in a message, said, “If we can not have war and if
appeasement does not work, we have a Third option”.
“It is time to take the MEK off the terrorist list”, he said.
Republican Senators Tom Coburn, member of Homeland Security and Government
Affairs committees, and Key Bailey Hutchinson, member of Appropriations
Committee, along with Congressman Tom Tancredo and Congresswoman Sheila
Jackson Lee also sent solidarity messages.
Congressmen Christopher Shays said that he shared the demonstrators’
concern that that the Iranian regime posed a “major threat” to peace and
stability in the Middle East and the wider world.
“The only reasonable and viable way for the Iranian people and the West is
to support a democratic change by backing the Iranian resistance and its
organised opposition. We should say Yes to Mrs. Rajavi’s
call for a democratic change by Iranian people”, a statement by Congressman Ed Towns said.
The demonstration was timed to take place days before the State of the
Union Address by President George W. Bush, who in 2002 described Iran as a member of the “Axis of
Evil”.
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