In a wide-ranging interview, Maryam Rajavi, a leading figure of the Iranian opposition and President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), describes Iran’s current wave of unrest as a decisive break from previous protest cycles and a new phase in the struggle against the mullahs’ regime. According to Rajavi, what distinguishes today’s uprising from those of 2019 and 2022 is not only its scale, but its organization, its explicitly overthrow-oriented nature, and its expansion across every social layer.
She explains that earlier uprisings were often triggered by specific events—the gasoline price hikes of 2019 or the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022—and were limited in either their social composition or political focus. The present movement, she argues, is different. It is not tied to a single incident, but to decades of accumulated anger, political awareness, and rejection of clerical rule. Workers, bazaar merchants, teachers, students, women, youth, and ethnic minorities are now mobilized across all 31 provinces, creating what she calls a truly nationwide revolt against the mullahs’ system.
Rajavi places particular emphasis on the role of organized opposition networks. She points to the Resistance Units as having linked scattered protests into a sustained national challenge. In her view, what has shaken the regime is not spontaneous unrest alone, but the combination of mass uprising with an organized resistance capable of confronting the state’s security apparatus and turning revolt into a struggle for political change.
On the question of how the clerical system could actually be removed, Rajavi rejects the idea that the regime will simply collapse on its own or that foreign pressure can determine Iran’s future. Instead, she insists that only an organized domestic opposition can bring about change. She presents the NCRI as a long-standing coalition of opposition forces that has been preparing not only for the fall of the current system, but also for the political transition that would follow.
According to Rajavi, the NCRI’s plan envisions a provisional government immediately after the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime, tasked solely with organizing free and universal elections for a Constituent Assembly within six months. That assembly would then assume authority, appoint a transitional government, and draft a new constitution to be approved by referendum. She refers to the Council’s Ten-point Plan as the framework for a future Iran, highlighting commitments to gender equality, separation of religion and state, political pluralism, judicial independence, and the abolition of the death penalty.
Rajavi also addresses the social impact of more than four decades of repression. Rather than a return to the cultural atmosphere of the 1970s, she predicts a more conscious and resilient society shaped by prolonged resistance to dictatorship. Women and youth, she says, are not only participants but drivers of the current uprising, breaking long-standing taboos and undermining fear. Their role, she argues, will be central to any democratic reconstruction after clerical rule.
Finally, she draws a sharp line between the opposition’s vision and any form of hereditary or absolute power. In her view, both monarchy and theocracy deny popular sovereignty. While she says all political forces committed to democracy, republicanism, and human rights should be free to compete in a future Iran, she firmly rules out any system rooted in divine or inherited authority.
Throughout the interview, Rajavi frames the current unrest as a point of no return. Whether or not her projections materialize, her remarks reflect how Iran’s political struggle is increasingly defined not just by protest, but by organized opposition and rival visions for a post-mullahs Iran.