July, 2, 2017—  Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, called on the international community to support a 10-point plan for regime change in Iran and described alarming conditions for political prisoners at a Paris conference on July 1. The conference, Free Iran, featured an estimated 100,000 participants, including refugees from Iran, Syria, and Palestine, as well as a myriad of American and European diplomatic officials and politicians.
Like any political organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran has been controversial.
Iran regards the organization as a “terrorist” front. But other descriptions of the organization have called it the only legitimate independent Iranian political party, of a sort, as a number of dissident voices against the Iranian government have found expression within it.