Less than a week after a five-day international conference held at Ashraf 3, Albania, home to members of the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin, also knows as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), thousands of Iranian regime opponents marched in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon, chanting in support of democracy and freedom in Iran. It was one of the largest rallies held by Iranians in Sweden in recent years.
Participants at meetings and rallies in Albania stressed the presence of a viable and competent alternative that stands ready to take over after the overthrow of the clerical regime. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani talked to Fox News on Friday about reports of the takeover of a British tanker in Omani waters in the Gulf by the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Cops (IRGC). He also talked in detail about the democratic alternative to the clerical regime, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). He mentioned personal accounts and observations gleaned from Ashraf 3, stressing that they strengthen his view about the fact that the mullahs’ overthrow is at hand.
The regime’s aggressions and adventurism in the Gulf and the seizure of a British tanker occupy global headlines. Although the fate of oil exports through the Gulf and the regime’s warmongering in the region have grabbed international attention, these developments cover up the real reason behind the regime’s actions and behavior.
The organized resistance inside the country and the swift expansion of MEK Resistance Units in various cities are the main source of anxiety for the regime. Its leaders and officials refer to young people who “lead and organize protests and strikes against the ‘system’ during the days and at nights set aflame posters of (regime) officials in streets and avenues.” This is what the mullahs are deadly afraid of and it is something that is echoed abroad through the Iranian exiled community’s extensive protests.
Organizers of the Stockholm protest, similar to previous large rallies held in Washington, Berlin and Brussels over the past several weeks, say that their action is a reflection of uprisings happening inside Iran. The flood of Iranians in Western capitals and streets shows that despite the regime’s belligerence in the region and in the Persian Gulf, including its confrontation with the U.S. and other countries, the regime’s fate in Tehran and other Iranian cities will be sealed through its fundamental confrontation with the Iranian people.