Supporters of an Iranian exile
group with ties to some of President Donald Trump’s top advisers rallied Friday
for regime change in Iran, amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran.
Clad in yellow vests
emblazoned with the words “Free Iran,” more than 1,000 members of the
Mujahedeen-e-Khalq gathered outside the State Department to demand an end to
Iran’s theocratic government.
The demonstration took place just hours after
Trump claimed he had approved but then called off military strikes against Iran
to retaliate for its downing of a US drone in the Arabian Gulf.
After the rally, the
demonstrators were to march to the White House to press their case.
“We have and will continue to
declare that what we seek is the regime’s overthrow, overthrow, overthrow,” the
group’s Paris-based leader Maryam Rajavi said in a video message to the crowd,
which also included current and former US lawmakers from both the Democratic
and Republican parties.
Known as the MEK, the group
has hosted Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton at previous events and
the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is a supporter.
Before joining
the administration, Bolton told an MEK meeting in 2018 that “before 2019, we
here ... will celebrate in Iran.” Giuliani, the former New York mayor, has made
similar comments before the MEK.
Last year its annual rally in
Paris that Giuliani attended was the target of an alleged Tehran-backed bomb
plot that was thwarted by arrests.
An Austrian-based Iranian
diplomat is being held in Belgium, where police found bomb material in the car
of a couple of Iranian origin.
The group has its headquarters
outside Paris with several thousand members in Albania, extracted in a
UN-brokered effort from Iraq.
In another development, the US
has requested a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on Iran and the latest
developments in the Gulf, diplomats said on Friday.
The discussions would touch on
both the recent attacks against oil tankers in the Gulf and the Iranian downing
of a US spy drone, a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. Another diplomat
told AFP the meeting would take place Monday afternoon.
Washington has also accused
Iran of responsibility for carrying out attacks on tankers in the congested
shipping lanes heading out of the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.
