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An Iranian businessman based in London and Dubai is leading efforts to bring opposition groups together at a conference in London this weekend.
Majid Zamani, founder of investment company Kian Capital, was previously jailed in Iran for his support of the Green Movement in 2009.
He is named as the executive director of the Iran Freedom Congress, where opposition groups in exile in the US and Europe will meet to discuss a democratic transition for Iran and find common ground for the “day after” the US-Iran war.
Mr Zamani set up Kian Capital in 2016, as the US-led Iranian nuclear deal came into effect, to tap into foreign investment in the country, according to an interview he gave to the Financial Times in 2017.
He left Iran during the anti-government protests in 2022. The following year, a Tehran-based economic news website owned by a subsidiary of Kian Capital was raided by the Iranian authorities, according to Iran International, an opposition TV channel headquartered in London.
Mr Zamani was not available for interview before the conference, which takes place on Saturday and Sunday.
Nationwide anti-regime protests in Iran that began in December and were followed by a brutal government crackdown have mobilised opposition groups in exile. They believe the regime is living out its final days.
The two-day event will feature a series of panel discussions about paths towards democracy, forming political parties and how to reach a consensus among a diverse opposition. There will also be panels dedicated to Iran’s economic development needs and the role of civil society and social movements.
The event's aim is to “promote agency and transparent participation in Iran’s transition beyond the Islamic Republic”, according to the website. It appears to reject “closed negotiations or external interventions” in Iran's future and says it will instead emphasise the role of “civic engagement”.
It seeks to bring together Iran's “diverse voices”, while “developing civil and political safeguards to prevent a recurrence of the failures experienced in 1979“, the year of the country's revolution.
Opposition in exile
Decades of autocratic rule and jailing of dissenters prevented Iranian opposition parties from developing, even in exile. Critics describe this opposition as fractured.
The largest anti-regime protests in the UK and US have so far rallied around Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s deposed shah who has expressed hope to lead the country after the fall of the Islamic Republic. But the divisive legacy of the Pahlavi family – whose military rule led to their overthrow in 1979 – means many Iranians in exile feel sidelined by this new swell of support.
The conference aims to bring those diverging voices together, from monarchists to republicans as well as Iran’s many ethnic groups who seek a federal state. It is not clear whether Mr Pahlavi’s followers, and those of Iran’s second-largest opposition group the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (MEK), will attend the event.
Former political prisoners Esmaeil Abdi and Hossein Razzagh are among those speaking. Mr Abdi is a maths teacher and trade union leader who was first arrested in 2016 for organising teachers’ protests, and Mr Razzagh is the founder of a popular political discussion group Azadi Square on the social media group Clubhouse, who was jailed from 2021 to 2024.
Hafez Fazeli, a London-based Ahwaz activist whose party campaigns for federalism in Iran, told The National he will attend the conference with other colleagues, but that he is managing expectations. “The solution is one that brings all these issues in a peaceful way, democratic, federal and secular,” he told The National.
“If we rely on the extremist government, Iran won’t progress. They have dated beliefs, suicidal beliefs that originate from old tales and ancient books,” he said. “It’s an ideology. How can you work with these people in building a government. Their vision is one of terror and discrimination.”
Razgar Alani, a UK representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said it was important to bring groups together whatever the outcomes. “Any gathering between the opposition is good,” he said.
“The only way we will win is to be united. The regime cannot survive any more – but what happens after the war? I would love all of the opposition to get together,” he told The National.
Some opposition groups have been meeting to overcome their differences since large anti-regime protests began in December. A grouping of Ahwaz Arab political parties announced the formation of a council in response to the protests in January, as did Kurdish parties in exile who have formed a coalition.
A wider coalition known as the Broad Solidarity for Freedom and Equality in Iran includes these minority groups as well as other parties from the Iranian left and has also been gaining momentum in that time.
