AP: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, addressing thousands of protesters near the United Nations on Wednesday, challenged President Barack Obama to take stronger action against Iran and the threat of it becoming a nuclear power.
The Associated Press
VERENA DOBNIK
NEW YORK — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, addressing thousands of protesters near the United Nations on Wednesday, challenged President Barack Obama to take stronger action against Iran and the threat of it becoming a nuclear power.
“If you’re going to support freedom in Libya, why not freedom in Iran?” Gingrich asked the crowd as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke to the U.N. General Assembly. “If you’re going to support freedom in Egypt, why not freedom in Iran?”
Gingrich, who ran for president this year, urged the U.S. government to help Iranians oust Ahmadinejad by bringing to bear “political, economic, informational and other pressure.”
Ahmadinejad, known for past fiery denunciations of the United States and Israel, said before the General Assembly that there is a “continued threat by the uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action against our great nation.”
Outside, Gingrich did praise the Obama administration for recently taking the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, off the U.S. terrorist watch list. The group is a major anti-Ahmadinejad force that was allied with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.
A coalition of Iranian-American groups organized the protest against Ahmadinejad in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the United Nations, one of the largest gatherings staged against the Iranian leader in recent years during the General Assembly.
Speakers included high-profile U.S. politicians including two former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N., Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy.
Protesters wore yellow vests with photos of people they say were massacred. One sign read: “Fallen for Freedom in Iran.”
Maryam Rajavi, an Iranian politician who heads the Paris-based National Council of Resistance, which opposes the Islamic regime, spoke to the protesters from France via satellite on a giant screen.
The MEK is the main component of Rajavi’s organization. The group was disarmed by U.S. soldiers during the Iraq invasion in 2003 and has since renounced violence.
Alex Mohammed, 40, a restaurant manager from Chicago, stood next to a mock jail cage with a noose next to it, and a cartoon of Ahmadinejad standing under a series of hanged Iranians’ legs, saying, “We don’t have political prisoners in Iran — anymore.”
“It’s getting worse in Iran, because the dictator is taking away more freedoms, including freedom of speech and jailing journalists,” said Mohammed, who has family in Tehran.Meanwhile, he said, “Obama is doing nothing.”
Native Syrians joined Iranian-Americans to decry Iran’s support of their homeland’s regime.
“This is a united symphony of protest,” said Malek Jandali, a musician of Syrian origin who lives in Atlanta. “We’re united against the massacres of men, women and children in both Iran and Syria.”
