A prominent Iranian activist has suggested Ireland could play a role in helping Iran to transition towards being a democratic state.
Negin Shiraghaei is a former BBC Persian TV presenter and the founder and director of Azad Network, a grassroots initiative committed to promoting alternative voices to the current Iranian government.
She is in Ireland as a guest of Caradem, a not-for-profit pro-democracy organisation cofounded by two former ministers for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney and Eamon Gilmore.
Caradem chief executive Catherine Heaney said the organisation wanted to work with Shiraghaei to build democratic alternatives that could fill a void in the event of the current Iranian regime falling as a result of the US-Israel attacks.
READ MORE
“Negin is looking for UN/EU and democratic state leadership and support. She recognises that Ireland may have agency in supporting this,” she said.
Shiraghaei said Ireland had shown how a democratic state could work after colonialisation. The example of the Belfast Agreement, as a model of conflict resolution, could also help in an Iranian context.
“Ireland is an example which is followed around the world,” Shiraghaei said. “I see the potential in Iranians to come together. I would love to see Ireland, a country which has done it in a meaningful way, step in and support the Iranian democratic cause.
“Ireland is in a position to genuinely claim it has the experience to mediate and help other countries create democracy.
“Everybody wants power. Unfortunately the democratic forces in Iran have been oppressed for the last 50 years in the most massive way. They have been destroyed on so many levels.”
Shiraghaei said she, like many Iranians, was glad Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the first day of the current conflict, but disappointed he would not face justice given the nature of the regime he upheld in the country.
“The democratic movement in Iran is not a new thing. It has more than 150 years of history,” she said.
“Iranian people have been asking for a change of the regime and democratic replacement for so many years.
“Unfortunately, there are no tools in their hands to actually do that themselves right now. The current constitution is written in a way that makes reform impossible.”
She said the Women, Life, Freedom movement, which began in 2022, and the recent demonstrations that continued despite a brutal crackdown that left thousands dead showed the resilience of the pro-democracy movement in the country.
There is, therefore, an imperative for Iranian civil society inside and outside the country to propose an alternative to any deal that US president Donald Trump might make to keep the current regime in place, she said.
The Islamic Republic regime has the support of about 20 per cent of the population, but everybody else in the country wants a different government, according to Shiraghaei.
“What is the alternative for the other 80 per cent? We don’t know yet. We need a space to have this conversation among ourselves so we can make informed decisions about our future.”
