Iranian Canadians rallied in a few of Canada’s major cities over the weekend, with some expressing words of elation and support over the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
The strikes began Saturday morning and appeared to focus on areas of downtown Tehran, which included locations linked to Iran’s leadership.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Truth Social the intent of the “massive” operation was to make sure Tehran doesn’t obtain a nuclear weapon, “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
For Sedi Minachi, the strikes were a positive event.
“I can’t stop being completely satisfied,” she said at a rally in Vancouver on Feb. 28. “I just, at first, I cried, I couldn’t consider it. I feel just like the nightmare after 47 years is ending, almost ending. We still haven’t heard the news of the collapse of the regime, but I look ahead to it.”
On Saturday afternoon, Trump said on Truth Social that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed within the strikes. State media later confirmed his death.
Minachi has organized protests and rallies in Vancouver in recent weeks, in opposition to the Iranian regime which had been cracking down on demonstrations against the federal government.
Iranians fed up with corruption, economic mismanagement and repressive religious rules of their country have been rallying since late last 12 months.
Iran’s government, which implemented a web blackout, said in mid-February that greater than 3,000 people had been killed because the protests broke out. However the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in counting deaths during previous rounds of unrest in Iran, put the death toll at greater than 7,000.
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Demonstrations have erupted in quite a few countries, including the U.S. and Canada.
On Feb. 14, a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals marched through Toronto, with similar protests held in Vancouver and other cities.
On Saturday and Sunday, different rallies were held – ones of celebration.
Shermineh Esmati Novak, a co-organizer of Saturday’s rally in Toronto, said there’s “much excitement.”
“It’s only a sense of, you understand, we completed something,” she told Global News. “There may be a component of unity.”
Esmati Novak acknowledged some people may find it “strange” for wanting military intervention, but “I feel we’re all hoping for it to occur.”
“We really need military aggression from the USA, because this regime won’t leave unless you herald real dominant military power to take them out,” she said.
Ardeshir Zarezadeh, a former Iranian political prisoner who fled to Canada, said the U.S.-Israel attack is a best-case scenario for each Iranians in search of an end to government repression, in addition to Western powers aiming to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
“If there may be a free country … there shall be no nuclear bomb,” Zarezadeh said. “It would be helpful for everybody within the Middle East and clearly for international peace.”
Zarezadeh, who’s now president of the Toronto-based International Centre for Human Rights, called the killing of protesters in Iran a “crime against humanity” and said the international community had an obligation to step in.
But some Iranian Canadians say they’re concerned in regards to the actions by the U.S. and Israel, even when it means the top of the Iranian regime.
“Interventions once they come from foreign governments don’t work in favour of the national sovereignty of Iran,” said Mona Ghassemi, president of the Iranian Canadian Congress.
Ghassemi noted with the president still alive and a short lived council, the present government has not yet fallen, but she’s unsure what could come if the regime were to fall.
“If that government were to fall, I can be concerned about what would come instead with these foreign interventions, because what the USA and Israel likely want can be a government that may be subservient to their demands,” she added.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a prerecorded message that a brand new leadership council “has begun its work” of finding a brand new leader.
There stays some concern amongst Iranian Canadians for his or her family members at home, Esmati Novak told Global News. Yet Ali Hassan Abadi, who attended Saturday’s rally in Toronto, said he believes that would change.
“Once we hear the primary news, we excited, we shocked, we have fun,” he said. “We hope the fear is completed, fear is gone very soon.”
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