A day after the American leader declared that a change of leadership would be the “best thing,” the exiled son of Iran’s last shah urged US President Donald Trump on Saturday to assist the Iranian people.
Reza Pahlavi, a US-based individual who hasn’t visited Iran since before the Islamic revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1979, told reporters at the Munich Security Conference that it was “time to end the Islamic republic.”
To align with protests in Germany and other countries, the opposition figure has called on Iranians both domestically and internationally to keep up their anti-government protests by chanting slogans from their houses and rooftops at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
As he dispatched a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East to increase military pressure on the Islamic republic, Trump declared on Friday that a change of administration in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen.”
In order to back a wave of public protests in Iran that reached their pinnacle in January and were met with a brutal crackdown that rights groups claim killed thousands of people, he had previously threatened military action.
“To President Trump… The Iranian people heard you say help is on the way, and they have faith in you. Help them,” Pahlavi told reporters in Munich.
“It is time to end the Islamic republic. This is the demand echoing from the bloodshed of my compatriots who are not asking us to fix the regime but to help them bury it,” he added.
Also on Saturday, Canada issued additional sanctions against Iran.
The seven “individuals sanctioned today are linked to Iranian state bodies responsible for intimidation, violence and transnational repression targeting Iranian dissidents and human rights defenders”, Ottawa said in a statement.
