LONDON: Protesters gathered outside the Iranian Embassy in London on Sunday shouting slogans against the regime, in support of recent anti-government protests in Iran.
The protest was staged as Iranian lawmakers held a closed-door session on Sunday about the week of demonstrations across the country.
According to protest organizers, the crowd numbered between 100 and 200 people.
London Metropolitan Police kept protesters away from the embassy building itself, containing them within a fenced off zone across the road in Kensington, west London.
Many of the protesters were seen holding pictures of the Shah of Iran who was overthrown in 1979.
Other protesters waved posters of Prince Reza Pahlavi, the last heir apparent to the defunct monarchy of Iran.
“There is one message from Iranian people: Regime change. (Iranian people) are sick and tired with the repression of the Islamic state of Iran,” Shahriar Bahrami, the protest’s organizer, told Arab News.
Police moved in to quell a minor scuffle between supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran and supporters of the Shah.
Bahrami said the two sides want the same thing and must “work together” to see regime change take place.
Protesters in the crowd were vociferous in condemning the Iranian regime: “The people of Iran are fed up with the economic situation, with the corruption, with the mismanagement of the public funds, with the government thugs, with the regime spending billions interfering in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, and at the same time the people of Iran are hungry; children have no food, no shoes to wear,” protester Reza Pardisan told Arab News.
The Iranian Embassy in London was not immediately available for comment.