Last week, Iranian expatriates traveled to Paris by the tens of thousands in anticipation of a demonstration that had been organized by the Iranian opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). More than 800 buses converged on the French capital from across Europe, and it was expected that upwards of 100,000 people would take part in the event, before French authorities made a last-minute announcement that it would not be permitted to go forward.
That decision was widely and loudly condemned not only by event organizers but also by Western lawmakers and prominent political figures. Speaking instead of at the major protest, at the Free Iran World Summit 2026 at the NCRI headquarters in Paris, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused the French government of having “bowed cravenly” and “capitulated to a regime in Tehran that tortures and kills its opponents on an industrial scale.”
It was by no means the first time that a European government was accused of appeasing that regime, nor the first time one was accused of doing so by weaponizing a legal process against expatriate activists. In fact, for decades, there has been a pervasive tendency toward this sort of appeasement.
Ironically, in its efforts to undermine support for NCRI, due to the coalition’s quick and impressive response, the French government actually helped the NCRI to further illustrate the organizational strength that makes it such a salient challenge to the theocratic dictatorship ruling its homeland. Immediately after the ban was announced, the NCRI launched a legal challenge in the French court system, and when that challenge was dismissed, around 50,000 of the rally’s prospective attendees elected to defy the ban, with some gathering at Place Vauban as planned, and others at Trocadéro, Bastille, and Place de la République.
This act of civil disobedience mirrored the spontaneous organizing that has taken place all across the Islamic Republic under the leadership of the NCRI’s main constituent group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), resulting in four nationwide uprisings since the end of 2017. In keeping with their counterparts’ defiance of brutal repression in their homeland, participants in the Paris demonstrations universally avoided initiating violence, but stood fast in the face of Parisian authorities’ efforts to force their dispersal.
That display of resilience came from a remarkably wide array of Iranian expatriates and ethnic Iranians, including teenagers and the elderly, professionals and the working class, and adherents to multiple faiths, or none at all. This, too, is consistent with what has been observed inside the Islamic Republic in recent years, where Iranians from all walks of life, across all 31 provinces, have joined in chanting provocative slogans that reveal longstanding associations with the PMOI, such as “death to the dictator, whether Shah or Supreme Leader.”
Supporters of the NCRI will surely look upon Saturday’s events as further confirmation of what they already knew to be true: that countless Iranians, both inside the Islamic Republic and throughout the diaspora are prepared to stand in solidarity with one another and lay down their lives if necessary to achieve the goal of a liberated nation with free and fair elections supporting the rule of law, gender equality, minority rights, and separation of religion from the state. While that day’s injuries and arrests pale in comparison to the mass killings in Iran, which followed the latest nationwide uprising in January of this year, it may prove uniquely significant that Western policymakers have now been afforded a close-up view of Iranian solidarity and organizing.
In this way, the banned demonstration promises to convey much the same message as it would have if French authorities had remained true to their prior commitment to defend an act of free expression that the NCRI had coordinated with them over two months.
And when Tehran’s malign activities inevitably accelerate in the aftermath of this latest effort to suppress the opposition, the shameful episode will underscore what former European Council President Charles Michel said at the NCRI’s summit: “Appeasement does not work—never... The regime has repeatedly exploited appeasement to buy time, [but this] only prolongs the suffering of the Iranian people." The NCRI’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, went beyond the condemnation of appeasement by urging Western governments to sever their diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic and recognize the legitimacy of a provisional government that the coalition announced after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of US military operations against Iran in February. “Neither negotiations nor war have provided an answer to the threat posed by religious fascism,” said Rajavi, the author of a ten-point plan for Iran’s free, democratic, and non-nuclear future. According to the NCRI, domestic regime change constitutes a “third option” that will not only liberate the Iranian people from brutal repression but also provide the Western world with security guarantees that they have sacrificed for decades in favor of maintaining the status quo in relations with a regime widely recognized to be the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.