Justice for Iran

“When I think that today we Iranians have to be represented by these people, warmongering, terrorist-sponsoring, Holocaust denying – can I possibly sit here and say nothing?”

In exile since his father was deposed in 1979, the Prince, 49, remains the figurehead for the three or four million strong Iranian diaspora. Since the elections he has stepped up calls for civil disobedience by Iranians, and for external support for that. His many conduits of information from Iran tell him the regime is fragmenting, and he eagerly awaits a tipping point.

“The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, of military juntas in South America, of the former Soviet Union – all of it came at the hands of the people of those nations themselves,” he says. “None of this could have happened without foreign support – but that is not the same as an occupying army that comes in and changes a regime – I don’t see how that can ever be legitimate.”

The unhappy experience of foreign intervention in Iraq has further convinced him of the importance of avoiding it in Iran.

“Change must come to Iran by civil disobedience and non-violence. I stress that. We can’t have change at any cost. It is ultimately a question of the sovereignty of that nation, and what happens must be the will of the people. But how do we determine that? There is an absence of public debate. There is an absence of the ballot box.”

Yet while he wants no armed intervention, he wants the Western powers, notably America, which has sought dialogue with the regime in Tehran, to be more directly supportive of the resurgent Iranian people and the opposition they are showing to Ahmadinejad.

“Today on the streets of Iran you hear cries of ‘Obama, Obama, you’re either with them or with us’. That is the people’s message to the outside world. We are saying to Obama and other leaders ‘We need your help’.”

“The Iranian women’s movement is not simply demanding equal rights alone. It is demanding a larger universal reality, which is democracy.”

- Dr. Shirin Ebadi

I asked Dr. Ebadi how the world generally, and Americans in particular, could support the democracy movement in Iran without appearing to appropriate it. She replied, “We are all passengers on the same boat. Our fates our intertwined. What we ask is that you cover news from Iran correctly, and say exactly what it is that women in Iran are opposing and fighting. When the world hears our voice, we know that they will reach out to us. We need the support of world public opinion. Because we are - at the end of the day - dealing with people, not governments.”