STRASBOURG: The head of an Iranian opposition group outlawed by Tehran said Wednesday that it was for the Iranian people to overthrow her country's Islamic regime, as Israel conducts an unprecedented air campaign.
After decades of enmity and a prolonged shadow war, Israel says its surprise attack that began on June 13 is aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons -- an ambition Tehran denies.
The strikes have killed a host of key Iranian figures, and the Israeli government has not ruled out triggering a wholesale removal of the clerical system set up after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
"The solution to this war and crisis lies in the overthrow of this regime and regime change by the Iranian people and their resistance," Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told a press conference at the European Parliament.
The NCRI is the political wing of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, which Tehran regards as a "terrorist" group.
In television interviews, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out killing Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though a US official said President Donald Trump had vetoed assassinating Iran's leader.
But speculation is mounting about a possible direct US involvement in the conflict, after Trump boasted on Tuesday that the United States could easily assassinate Khamenei and called for Iran's "unconditional surrender".
Rajavi, who lives in exile, warned against negotiating with Khamenei, saying the regime "will never relinquish its uranium enrichment program".
But she added that "an alternative cannot be imposed from above, as was done a century ago when Britain installed a monarch by appointment. Nor can it be forced upon the people like the 1953 coup d'etat by the United States".
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that any attempt to change the government in Iran would result in "chaos".