300 Rally to Urge Overthrow of Iran’s Islamic Republic

About 300 Iranians and Iranian-Americans clustered outside the Federal Building in Westwoodlate Sunday afternoon, protesting alleged human rights violations by the Iranian government and calling for “death to the Islamic republic.”

Railing against the Iranian government from a makeshift podium erected in front of the Wilshire Boulevard side of the building, local leaders of the anti-government movement urged the United States and the United Nations to help topple the regime of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s president.

“The whole world should be ashamed if they don’t help us,” said Jhannet Fargan, who said she was jailed in Iran a few years ago for wearing lipstick. “We are going to get freedom for our country. The love for our country is in our blood.”