Some Iranians living in Ireland have welcomed the intervention of the United States and Israel in Iran.
Dozens of Iranians attended a protest at the Spire in Dublin city centre on Saturday afternoon. The demonstration was arranged before the US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on Saturday morning.
“Many of us Iranians, outside of Iran and inside of Iran, are very happy, and we were waiting for this intervention,” organiser Roshin Farahani said.
Farahani, an Irish citizen, said she is “of course” worried for her loved ones in Iran but she supports the foreign intervention.
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“I am worried for every single one of the Iranian people, they are all my family. I want freedom for Iran. I want democracy for Iran.”
Iranians living in Ireland have held several protests here over the last two months, in response to the mass killings of demonstrators in Iran.
Antigovernment protests in Tehran began in late December, quickly spreading in size and location. Protesters want Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who oversees the strict Islamist Government, ousted.
The demonstrations resulted in a brutal crackdown by the regime with large numbers of people killed or going missing. While the Iranian Government puts the death toll at a few thousand people, opposition groups claim it could be closer to 50,000.
Farahani welcomed the fact the European Union earlier this month designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation but said more needs to be done. She called on Ireland and other European countries to expel Iranian diplomats.
“They shouldn’t be allowed to live in the streets of Europe with access to the free world while the people of Iran are suffering,” she said.
Another protester, who did not wish to give his name, also welcomed the foreign intervention in Iran.
“This regime only understands this type of attack,” he said.
“50,000-plus individuals, young children, mothers, daughters, fathers, they were all massacred in the streets ... The people need the help of the foreign world. Without that, they will be massacred again.”
The man, who has lived in Ireland for several years, said the voices of the Iranian people have “not been heard across the globe in the past 47 years” – since the 1979 revolution resulted in the monarchy being overthrown and Shia Muslim clerics taking power.
“This is our chance here to let the world know what’s happening in Iran. People in Iran have been suppressed.
“They have not been able to express their opinions. They have not been able to have any type of freedom. There is a big gender apartheid happening in Iran,” he said.
Vitaly, who did not wish to share his surname, has lived in Ireland for three years. He is transgender and said he “escaped” Iran because members of the LGBT+ community are persecuted there.
“Iranian people, women, LGBT people, they have a lot of problems with the Iranian regime,” he said.
Vitaly is worried for his parents and wider family who live in Tehran. Communication has been difficult in recent weeks – after the regime imposed an internet ban – but he spoke to his mother on Saturday.
“This morning, I was speaking with my mother and we heard the sound of rockets and bombs. After that, we understood the war had started,” he said.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Helen McEntee earlier said she was “deeply concerned that the US and Israel have decided to launch widespread armed conflict against Iran at this time.
“I am equally dismayed at the Iranian response in recent hours. As was made clear to me on my visit to the region last month, further conflict is profoundly unhelpful and presents challenges which only make already deep divisions more dangerous and unstable and put more lives in the region at risk.”
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has promised a “crushing response” to the US and Israeli strikes.
