The Only Real Alternative: Organized Resistance and Iran’s Democratic Future

You have long talked about overthrowing the regie would take actual resistance on the ground. You’ve been very clear that needs to be people on the ground. What would that actually look like? How would that realistically unfold? And then what credible alternative exists if that effort for overthrow is successful?

The clear alternative—and the proven solution to the Iran question—is change brought about by the Iranian people themselves, through organized resistance and resistance units.

Our specific strategy for overthrowing this regime is centered on the fusion of two elements: one is popular uprising and organized resistance, including the resistance units. Both elements have been tested and can be observed.

On the one hand, the social conditions are far more explosive than during the January uprising, and there is no doubt that larger uprisings are on the horizon.

On the other hand, organized resistance is far more prepared than in the past. Resistance units—only during the January uprising alone—carried out 630 operations against repressive centers to protect the protesters. On February 23, 250 MEK fighters launched an assault on Khamenei’s heavily guarded headquarters. Resistance units, in their quantitative and qualitative expansion, have evolved into organized units of a liberation army.

In addition to the resistance units, there exists a vast, organized social network of MEK supporters across the country, playing an effective role in uprisings. Their struggle in cities and their resistance in prisons have had a profound impact on society. For example, members of a six-member MEK unit, commanded by Vahid Bani-Amerian, in the days before their execution, sang a collective anthem inside prison. This profoundly moving footage has now gone viral. International television channels have broadcast it repeatedly; French television, in airing their images, described it as a powerful symbol of the Iranian people’s resistance and dignity and is quite powerful.

Here, I have their pictures. This is the scene where they had stood in prison and were singing together.

As I have repeatedly stated, real change in Iran requires a combat-ready, organized force on the ground. The fake alternatives, polished through social media engineering and glossy television programs, lack even the slightest real role or relevance. These represent remnants of the former dictatorship who aspire to return Iran to the past. But a people who sacrifice their lives do so not for a return to the past, but for a democratic future.

One must not lose sight of the fact that elevating a manufactured alternative built around the Shah’s son and the remnants of the former dictatorship serves as one of the clerical regime’s key levers to confront and contain the uprising and the organized Resistance.

https://www.maryam-rajavi.com/en/washington-times-irans-regime-is-at-its-weakest-point/