By Pooya Stone
In spite of the summer vacation, the Iranian diaspora in northern Europe is preparing for another show of solidarity with the social movement inside Iran.
A big demonstration is scheduled for tomorrow Saturday in Stockholm’s Kungstradgarden early in the afternoon. This is the fourth such event to take place during less than a month, with the last such big gathering in Berlin having grouped more than 15000 people on July 6. Although organizers in Stockholm admit not awaiting such a huge number of participants given the size of Iranian presence in Sweden compared to that in Germany, nonetheless they expect no less than 5000 people attending as the community is well mobilized in whole Scandinavia for the event.
Iran has been much in the news during last weeks.
Amid tense situation in the Persian Gulf with oil tankers being threatened by fast boats belonging to the Iranian regime and destabilizing action taken by pro-Iran militia in Yemen and in Iraq with the American armada present, Iranian leaders have not hidden their dismay face a dissenting population that seems not prepared to buy the regime’s anti-American and anti-Western propaganda but rather asking for better living conditions. Iranians see the regime’s adventurist and interventionist policies in the region as a main reason for their economic misery, and claim, during their protest demonstrations, that the mullahs “leave aside Syria and take care of their own people”.
The opposition has been at its peak of activity during last week. Five days of consecutive meetings held by the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in Albania in which several hundred Western as well as Arab dignitaries took part has had a tangible mark on the ongoing events, with people no less than Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and personal lawyer of the US president Donald Trump calling for regime change in Iran, and former prime ministers and foreign ministers of France , Canada and Algeria calling the world to put an end to what they called a “policy of appeasement” towards the regime in power in Iran.
Similar demands are expected to be made during tomorrow’s gathering. In fact, demonstrators have been asking, since some time, for listing the regime and its dignitaries as “terrorist” entities by the US and the EU. Last April, the US State Department listed the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Iranians ask for other organs, such as the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) to undergo the same fate. They say that way, much of the latter’s activity abroad, aiming members of the diaspora and the resistance leaders, would be curbed. Several European Security services, such as that of Germany, have confirmed Iranian regime’s plot against MEK members like one big attempt foiled in June 2018 near Paris by police forces belonging to four European countries.
So Stockholm would certainly be the point to watch in Iran developments tomorrow.
