Maryam Rajavi, the elected president of the National Resistance Council of Iran, a coalition of dissident Iranian groups, on Wednesday told European legislators that only “the change of regime by the people of Iran and the organized resistant” can guarantee regional peace.
Israel’s surprise attack, said Rajavi, represents “the beginning of a new critical chapter, both in Iran’s internal crisis and in the broader dynamics of the region.”
The smoke rises from a fire in Tehran, Iran, in this fixed image obtained from the video of the social networks released on June 17, 2025.
Social Networks/Social Networks through Reuters
Rajavi also seemed to criticize the Iranian monarchists who have recovered around the opposition leader Páhlavi, son of former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed by the Iranian revolution of 1979, who in recent days has called the Iranians to rise against the government in Tehran.
“An alternative cannot be imposed from above, as was done a century ago when Britain installed a monarchy with an appointment,” Rajavi told legislators on Wednesday. “Nor can people be forced as the coup d’etat of 1953 by the United States against the nationalist government of [former Prime Minister Mohammad] Mosaddegh “.
“If there had been a legitimate nationalist and democratic government, the course of the history of Iran, and in fact the fate of this region, would have been deeply different,” he said.
“Neither the Shah, nor the Mulás,” Rajavi added. “The people of Iran will not accept any form of dictatorship and demand freedom.”
The NCRI has been recognized as the political arm of the Mojahedin popular organization of Iran, known as the Mek, which was a leftist revolutionary organization in Iran that fought against a guerrilla war against the last Shah and, after the 1979 revolution, the theocratic regime.
The NCRI has notable supporters among the traditional hawks of Iran in the United States, with figures such as former vice president Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security advisor John Bolton and others who had spoken in their events in recent years.
The NCRI has asked for the establishment of a democratic and secular republic in Iran. The USs recognized the Mek, and by NCRI extension, as terrorist organizations until 2012.
