Iranian Americans rally outside White House for “third option” Fri. 20 Jan 2006

 

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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