Iranian Opposition Figures Show Unity in Defying Regime

While the Islamic Republic often publicly denigrates its opponents as divided and ineffective, that criticism no longer applies. Over the new year’s weekend, a number of prominent exiled Iranians simultaneously issued a message to demonstrate their unified sense of purpose.The widely followed Iranian personalities, including a journalist and activist, Masih Alinejad, and the late shah’s son, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, are predicting “victory” for the opposition in 2023. They posted their tweets at the same time and in a unified language. “The year 2022 was a glorious year of solidarity for Iranians of every belief, language and orientation,” the postings read. “With organization and solidarity, 2023 will be the year of victory for the Iranian nation, the year of freedom and justice in Iran.”“This is just the beginning, the first step toward an opposition united by the same aspiration, a free and democratic Iran,” Ms. Alinejad told the Sun. Others who posted the same message included the winner of the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in France last year, Zar Amir Ebrahimi. Two additional Iranian actors, Golshifteh Farahani and Nazanin Boniadi, also lent their voices. A former star of the Iranian soccer team, Ali Karimi, was also in the group tweet, as was an author and activist, Hamed Esmaeilion. A Nobel peace laureate, Shirin Ebadi, quickly retweeted the posting. The group’s message was well received inside Iran, where the anti-regime revolution has just marked 100 days of the protest that erupted following the regime’s killing of a 22-year-old, Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, for improperly wearing her mandatory head cover. Although the regime is attempting to block access to social media, Iranians are well aware of the united postings, learning about them through virtual private networks, word of mouth, and by listening to Farsi-language reports from the BBC, the Voice of America, and other outlets. “The joint message of several opposition figures for the new year has drawn wide reactions on social networks and has been welcomed by many users” inside Iran, the BBC Persian service tweeted Sunday. “This was a great move by the Crown Prince, Masih and others,” an unidentified young man in Tehran, who since the beginning of the protest movement is said to have been fighting the regime security forces on the streets and via social media, told the London-based website Iran International.“The regime has always tried to divide the opposition to conquer,” he said, “but this move neutralizes their efforts and can help unite the supporters of individual figures who have shown solidarity with their New Year greeting. Unity is our key to victory.”Ms. Alinejad and Mr. Pahlavi have large followings inside Iran. Both have long called for unity among the various factions opposing the regime. The public new year’s message for the first time showed the kind of unity that may signal a turning point in the revolution. The importance of exiles as catalysts in revolutions couldn’t have escaped the crown prince. Street protests against his father erupted and consolidated in 1977. Yet, it wasn’t until late in the next year that an obscure ayatollah, Rohollah Khomeini, arrived at a small village outside of Paris and started producing audio tapes that made the shah’s overthrow inevitable. Khomeini was exiled by the shah in 1964. For years he resided at the Shiite pilgrimage town of Najaf, Iraq. Under pressure, Baghdad decided to exile him again in late 1978. He landed at Orly airport, where supporters prearranged a villa for him at Neauphle-le-Chateau, near Paris.His tape-recorded messages from France were smuggled into Iran, where they gained a huge following. A few months later, in February 1979, Khomeini triumphantly returned to Iran. He quickly became the country’s new leader and set up the clerical-led Islamic Republic, which immediately established its own oppressive mechanisms to brutally quash any opposition. Last November, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, met with Ms. Alinejad at Paris. Afterward, he became the first Western leader to refer to the current street protests in Iran as a revolution. “Mr. Macron had nothing to gain by getting involved,” the man behind the Macron-Alinejad meeting, the French philosopher and journalist Bernard Henri Levy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. With the meeting, however, the French president closed “the dark page of history that was opened nearly a half-century ago when the French village of Neauphle-le-Château served as the rear base for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,” Mr. Levy wrote. Unlike the shah and Khomeini, many of the current anti-regime figures, including Ms. Alinejad and Mr. Pahlavi, are promoting an inclusive, pluralistic, democratic, and secular form of government in Iran. “The Iranian protesters are looking for an organized, cohesive voice outside the country,” the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brosdsky, told the Sun. “That these very prominent figures speak out in a single voice is very important” for the protesters inside Iran.

Iranian Opposition Figures Show Unity in Defying Regime

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