Rajavi Presses UK MPs to Champion ‘Third Option’ for Iran

Exiled Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi delivered a recorded address to a cross-party conference in the UK Parliament on 16 July titled “Third Option: Change by Iran’s People and Resistance.” Rajavi, who heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told lawmakers that Tehran’s clerical establishment “has never been as vulnerable” and argued that democratic change must come from within Iran, not through foreign intervention or accommodation with the regime. Rajavi linked the government’s fragility to a recent 12-day regional conflict and a subsequent domestic clamp-down. She cited a 12 July ruling in which the Iranian Judiciary handed double death sentences to political prisoners Farshad Etemadifar, Masoud Jamei and Alireza Merdasi for alleged membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran. Two other men received a combined 27 years in prison, while the Supreme Court reaffirmed death sentences on two additional detainees. Calling the executions proof of Tehran’s fear of renewed unrest, Rajavi urged British lawmakers to table a resolution that recognises the legitimacy of Iran’s resistance units, triggers the snap-back of United Nations sanctions under Resolution 2231 and makes all UK dealings with Tehran conditional on an immediate halt to executions. She also pressed for the regime to be designated a threat to international peace under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Rajavi’s appeal follows a separate declaration by 159 members of the French National Assembly endorsing her ten-point programme for a secular, gender-equal and non-nuclear republic. The twin initiatives underscore growing European interest in the so-called “Third Option” of domestic, democratic change in Iran.