‘Iranian people are the number one victims of this brutal regime’
Australian academic and former political prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert, along with Iranian activists, hope Israel's Iran operation brings about regime change.
Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was held in an Iranian prison for more than two years on trumped-up charges of “espionage”, has emphatically welcomed Israel’s air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and its senior officials.
Contacted by The AJN, Moore-Gilbert, said numerous officials “with blood on their hands” have been eliminated in Israel’s military campaign.
”Like thousands of other victims of the Islamic Republic, I was thrilled to hear that so many evil people with inordinate blood on their hands have been taken out. Among them Mohammed Kazemi, the head of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Intelligence branch responsible for taking me hostage.
“I am also however quite worried about my friends in Iran and their families. The regime has not built a single bomb shelter for the Iranian people, many of whom are terrified that they will become collateral damage in a war brought upon them by a much-loathed regime.
“I hope that the Israelis can avoid harming civilians as much as possible, especially as the Iranian people are the number one victims of this brutal regime,” she said.
Moore-Gilbert was arrested at Tehran Airport by the IRGC as she was leaving Iran in September 2018 after attending an academic conference. Falsely accused of espionage, she languished in Iranian prisons until November 2020 and was beaten and kept in solitary confinement.
In 2023-24, she was heavily involved in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which was formed after the prison death of Iranian Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’.
In Australia, the movement campaigned for Canberra to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation and place heavy sanctions on Iran for its human rights abuses.
Sydney activist Daniel Taghaddos said the MehrEran (Peace and Patriotism) Foundation, which he and activist Leila Naseri co-founded after the Amini outrage, ran street-corner information desks in Sydney and Melbourne last Saturday and is planning larger rallies. He said Jewish supporters of Iranian democracy attended in solidarity.
Taghaddos, who migrated to Australia seven years ago and is concerned for family members in Tehran, told The AJN he is hoping for the overthrow of the clerical regime but is unsure how long that might take. “We hope the people can do it themselves.”
Meanwhile, Queenslanders Azin Naghibi and her husband Hesam Orouji contacted Jewish friends in Brisbane over the weekend. Naghibi and Israeli-Australian Roslyn Mendelle are co-directors of Minority Impact Coalition, a multicultural alliance founded by Mendelle, which supports democratic values.
The Iranian activists and their Jewish supporters in the Queensland Jewish Collective staged a rally in solidarity with Israel’s military campaign, at which they sang the Iranian and Israeli national anthems and flew the the ‘lion-and-sun’ flag of pre-revolutionary Iran alongside the Israeli flag.
Naghibi, who fled Iran 10 years ago, has family in Iran but can never return under the Islamic Republic. She told The AJN that her organisation understands at least 70 per cent of Iranians in Iran want to see regime change.
“I’m sure the regime will be finished soon … I’m sure the last kick for the regime will be from the Iranian people themselves. Hopefully one day soon we can have direct flights from Tehran to Tel Aviv.”
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