London.- Several hundred people, mostly Iranian exiles, demonstrated this Sunday in London in favor of the return to Iran of Reza Pahlavi, heir to the shah deposed in 1979, and asked for support from the United States and Israel to overthrow the current Islamist regime.
Participants in the protest, called by Pahlavi himself, who resides in the U.S., waved imperial flags, as well as English and Israeli flags, and displayed banners where they asked to restore friendship with the Jewish State and "Return greatness to Iran", in line with the slogan used by President Donald Trump in his country.
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Fueled by live music and amidst a large police presence, the demonstration at the gates of Downing Street - the office and residence of the British Prime Minister - followed another held the previous day near the Iranian embassy, in which a man managed to climb onto the balcony to replace the flag of the Islamic Republic with the monarchical one.
Recovering the Persian Essence
In Sunday's demonstration, many of the attendees demanded that the United States and Israel intervene, militarily if necessary, to support their compatriots who have been protesting since December 28 and bring down the ayatollahs' regime, established 47 years ago.
"What is happening now is something monumental. We are reclaiming Iran from a group of anti-Iranian occupiers who have turned the country into a source of wealth for their ideological purposes. They are not interested in the true Persian values," Payam Ahmadi, a civil engineer who came to the UK 25 years ago, told EFE.
Ahmadi asked that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "step forward" to "liberate" the Iranians, since, without their help, "they will be massacred".
"Israel and Iran have historically been allies. We do not want to be known as a country that sponsors terrorism, nor do we want to have anything to do with Gaza or the war between Palestinians and Israelis, it has nothing to do with us," he stated.
Like Ahmadi, nurse Manna Mousavi opined that Pahlavi is the best option to lead a transition, as "he has defended democracy, secularism, peace, and territorial integrity from day one."
"He is the heir to the throne, but he has left it to the people to decide in free elections whether they want a constitutional monarchy or a republic. He knows the mullahs better than anyone, because they killed his family," he stated.
Mousavi, who arrived in the British capital 5 years ago, stressed that "Iran and the Islamic Republic are not the same; that brutal theocratic regime does not represent the Iranian people."
Islamophobic Youth
Her husband, Mustafa Nejati, is a political refugee, who arrived in England illegally hidden in a truck in 2018.
Nejati explained to EFE that, although his generation reluctantly accepted Islam, today's young Iranians "are Islamophobic."
"The mindset of Generation Z in Iran is that they can no longer tolerate the current regime. They don't want to follow the rules imposed on them. They can't stand the hypocrisy of having to pretend in public," he said.
Nejati trusted that, if the Islamic Government falls, religion "will become something private and not political".
He also assured that he was not worried about possible interference from the United States, "since there is no other option." "Many democracies, such as Germany or Japan, arose from foreign interventions," he pointed out.
Previously, a group convened by the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women demonstrated in the same area, who asked the British Government to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a proscribed terrorist organization, due to the repression of the protests in Iran.
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