British-Iranians in UK report safety concerns to authorities amid Iran war

Iranians living in the UK have expressed safety concerns to authorities amid heightened tensions linked to the conflict with the US and Israel.

Online videos of individuals allegedly being “aggressive” and “coercing” in London, which is home to one of the UK’s largest Iranian communities, have led to some feeling unsafe.

“There are people that have lived here for 40-plus years and there’s never been any issues, and it’s just all of a sudden we keep hearing every day about incidents involved with these pro-monarchists and their intimidation,” Naghmeh Rajabi, a British-Iranian activist, said.

Rajabi, who came to the UK at age 11 with her family and has had relatives killed by the former Iranian regime, said she no longer feels safe going to Finchley – the north London area known as Little Tehran owing to its large diaspora.

In recent weeks, she has met the Metropolitan police and members of Barnet council to voice concerns about alleged intimidation and harassment of Iranians.

Among them are online videos in Farsi of individuals being “aggressive and attacking”, Rajabi said, as well as people “coercing” shop owners in London to display the lion and sun flag, the symbol of Iran before the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“We are very worried,” said Rajabi, who is a supporter of Maryam Rajavi, a leader of the exiled dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The group has been accused of being a cult-like organisation that was once aligned with Saddam Hussein, and is vying for leadership among Iranian factions.

“Unless concrete action is taken, this is just going to escalate,” Rajabi said.

Local police officers have met community representatives and local businesses in recent weeks to help manage tensions and reassure the community, and have increased patrols in Barnet.

Det Supt Katie Harber, who leads policing in the borough, said: “London is a global city and the impact of events that take place thousands of miles away play out locally in the capital.

“We understand the fears that many people in our Iranian communities may have.”

The concerns come amid broader heightened tensions linked to the Iran war. Last week, authorities banned a longstanding al-Quds Day march as well as planned counterprotests, citing high risks of public disorder.

In early March, police arrested four men suspected of spying for Iran. Two of the men were charged on Wednesday. On Friday, two people, one of them Iranian, were arrested after they allegedly tried to enter the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland.

British-Iranians living in the UK have urged Keir Starmer not to let the UK get drawn further into the conflict. After the death of Iran’s longstanding supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, some took to the streets in support of the US and Israeli attacks while others were not in a celebratory mood.

Now British-Iranians, some of whom have fled the Islamic republic and were united in anti-government protests in 2022, find themselves both concerned with the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East and related matters in the UK.

A recent petition on Change.org called on the Home Office to investigate UK supporter groups of Reza Pahlavi, an exiled son of Iran’s former pro-western monarch, and to “protect communities” including Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds and others “from intimidation and threats of violence”.

Pahlavi, who has been approached for comment, last week urged Iranians abroad to protest outside Iranian embassies during Chaharshanbe Suri, an ancient Persian fire festival.

When asked by CNN about online harassment from individuals claiming to be Pahlavi supporters, Pahlavi said: “I’ve always spoken against any kind of political violence or intimidation.”

While the level of popular support Pahlavi has garnered inside Iran is unclear, Vahid Beheshti, an activist and founder of Iran Front, said it was “not possible” to unify all the diverse groups within Iran under one individual or ideology. The way forward for a transitional leader, he said, was to work together around a legal framework.

“We have to be very aware that the regime used any opportunity to spread this narrative that there’s a big division between Iranian opposition and [that] they can not sit around one table,” Beheshti said.

“That’s a very famous narrative that the regime really wants to spread, by that telling to the international community we don’t have a replacement,” he added.

Beheshti has previously staged a two-year protest outside the Foreign Office and was warned last year by authorities that he might be a target after the Israeli embassy in London was the target of an alleged terror plot.

“The regime, most of the time, at this very crucial moment, when they see they are collapsing, they are using the name of opposition against opposition and mainly they use monarchist masks to attack others,” he said.

For Laila Jazayeri, the director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, Finchley had become a “no-go”.

“It’s like, what do you call it? An atmosphere of terror that we have in Iran. It’s so intense,” she said.

Jazayeri hopes Rajavi will become modern Iran’s first female leader and has called on the British government to proscribe Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – which former UK leaders have previously rejected.

In recent weeks, Jazayeri said she has spoken with police. “I just don’t feel safe,” she said.