Mehdi Oghbai: Containing Iran’s Clerical Regime Has Failed—A Democratic Alternative Is Now a Strategic Necessity

Mehdi Oghbai, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said that the recent political meetings in Rome marked an important shift in the way the Iranian crisis is being addressed. Rather than merely discussing how to contain the regime or limit its threats, they raised the fundamental question Western capitals have long avoided: what should follow the fall of the clerical regime?

Oghbai said that for more than four decades, Western policy treated the regime as a permanent reality and confined its options to temporary pressure, appeasement, and repeated negotiations. The result, however, has been more executions and repression inside Iran, an expanded network of proxy militias and terrorism across the region, accelerated missile and nuclear programs, and the use of hostage-taking and blackmail as instruments of state policy.

He said the meetings in the Italian Parliament, the Senate, and the Einaudi Foundation broke this political deadlock and reflected a growing recognition that Iran’s future must not remain trapped between two failed options: foreign war or accommodation with dictatorship. A genuine third option exists—democratic change led by the Iranian people and their organized resistance.

Oghbai emphasized that this alternative is not based on theory, but on a dynamic political and social reality inside Iran. Successive uprisings and protests by women, young people, students, workers, and retirees show that Iranian society rejects both the continuation of the current dictatorship and any return to the past. The growing activities of the Resistance Units also demonstrate the existence of an organized force capable of transforming public anger into a focused movement for change.

He said the regime’s reliance on executions, torture, mass arrests, and internet shutdowns is not a sign of strength, but evidence of its profound fear of society. A confident government does not need to kill protesters or close public space. A regime terrified of its own people resorts to war and repression in an attempt to postpone its downfall.

Oghbai described Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan as a practical framework for democratic transition, based on free elections, political pluralism, separation of religion and state, full equality between women and men, judicial independence, abolition of the death penalty, respect for ethnic and religious communities, and a non-nuclear Iran living in peace with its neighbors.

He stressed that supporting this path does not mean foreign governments should choose Iran’s future leaders. That decision belongs exclusively to the Iranian people through free elections. The international community, however, has a responsibility to end policies that grant the regime time and legitimacy, hold its officials accountable for repression and terrorism, and recognize the Iranian people’s right to resist dictatorship.

Oghbai concluded that the United States and Europe must move beyond short-term crisis management and adopt a long-term policy supporting democratic change. Authoritarian regimes often appear stable until the moment they collapse. Strategic realism therefore requires serious engagement now with Iran’s organized democratic alternative—not the restoration of the Shah’s dictatorship and not the preservation of the mullahs’ rule.