STRASBOURG, France — The head of an Iranian opposition group outlawed by Tehran said Wednesday that it was for the Iranian people to overthrow her country’s Islamic regime, as Israel conducts an unprecedented air campaign to destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“The solution to this war and crisis lies in the overthrow of this regime and regime change by the Iranian people and their resistance,” Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told a press conference at the European Parliament.
The NCRI is the political wing of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, which Tehran regards as a “terrorist” group.
Israel says its surprise attack on Iran that began on June 13 is a preemptive action against an imminent “existential” threat. Iran has responded with deadly barrages of ballistic missiles at civilian population centers and military targets in Israel.
The Israeli strikes have killed a host of key Iranian figures, and the Jerusalem government has not ruled out triggering a wholesale removal of the clerical system set up after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In TV interviews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though a US official said President Donald Trump had vetoed assassinating Iran’s leader.
This photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, shows Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a televised speech, under a portrait of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, June 13, 2025. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Netanyahu told Fox News on Sunday that regime change in Iran “could certainly be the result” of Israel’s ongoing military campaign, though he did not say it was the goal. He has since continued with a series of comments in favor of regime change in Tehran.
But speculation is mounting about a possible direct US involvement in the conflict, after Trump boasted on Tuesday that the United States could easily assassinate Khamenei and called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” It was a more strident demand than those made in rounds of talks between the US and Iran on curbing the latter’s nuclear program, which included Washington’s insistence that it end uranium enrichment.
Rajavi, who lives in exile, warned against negotiating with Khamenei, saying the regime “thrives on exporting terrorism and fundamentalism, relentlessly pursues nuclear weapons, and will never relinquish its uranium enrichment program.”
Khamenei, she said, “sees any concession as the quickest path to his own downfall.”
But she added that “an alternative cannot be imposed from above, as was done a century ago when Britain installed a monarch by appointment. Nor can it be forced upon the people like the 1953 coup d’etat by the United States.”
“The only viable solution remains the overthrow of this regime by the people of Iran and the Iranian Resistance,” she added, while repeatedly stressing that her movement is the best option to lead the change.
“The issue of the day in Iran — and the war that has been waged over it — is the nuclear question,” she said. “Yet the issue of Iran in its entirety goes far beyond this regime’s nuclear program. At its core, the conflict is between the people of Iran and the Iranian Resistance on one side, and religious tyranny on the other.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a press conference on June 16, 2025. (Screencapture/GPO)
Iran, which has vowed to destroy the Jewish state, insists that its nuclear program is peaceful; however, it has been enriching uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, has obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities, and has greatly expanded its ballistic missile capabilities.
In a Hebrew interview aired on Channel 14 on Wednesday, Netanyahu said of the Iranian people, “In the end, they have to rise up themselves, but we are creating the conditions. And that’s why it could be consequential.”
The prime minister twice claimed that “80 percent” of Iranians “hate” the ruling regime, without providing where the figure came from.
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that any attempt to change the government in Iran would result in “chaos.”
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