Iran’s ‘paper tiger’ leadership will fall, Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi predicts
The lawyer, who is known for her work defending human rights, thinks Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will be toppled in a peaceful revolution
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Wednesday Iran’s war with Israel had revealed the weakness of its “paper tiger” leadership, predicting that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be toppled in a peaceful revolution.
She spoke a day after a shaky ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump took hold between Iran and Israel, ending a short but intense air war in which Israeli strikes seemingly targeted Iran’s senior leadership at will.
“The people of Iran and the world saw that and realised what a paper tiger this administration is,” Ebadi said in an interview in London, where she has lived in self-imposed exile since 2009.
Ebadi, a lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work defending human rights, has been a staunch critic of the Shiite Muslim clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since 1979.
Security officials said Khamenei, 86, went into hiding during the conflict, which wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military leadership and killed its leading nuclear scientists.
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“The people will not trust a leader who hides during times of war,” Ebadi said.