Iranians living in the UK have expressed safety concerns to authorities amid heightened tensions linked to the conflict with the US and Israel.<\/p>\n
Online videos of individuals allegedly being \u201caggressive\u201d and \u201ccoercing\u201d in London<\/a>, which is home to one of the UK\u2019s largest Iranian communities, have led to some feeling unsafe.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are people that have lived here for 40-plus years and there\u2019s never been any issues, and it\u2019s just all of a sudden we keep hearing every day about incidents involved with these pro-monarchists and their intimidation,\u201d Naghmeh Rajabi, a British-Iranian activist, said.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 the north London area known as Little Tehran<\/a> owing to its large diaspora.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, she has met the Metropolitan police<\/a> and members of Barnet council to voice concerns about alleged intimidation and harassment of Iranians.<\/p>\n Among them are online videos in Farsi of individuals being \u201caggressive and attacking\u201d, Rajabi said, as well as people \u201ccoercing\u201d shop owners in London to display the lion and sun flag, the symbol of Iran before the Islamic Revolution in 1979.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very worried,\u201d said Rajabi, who is a supporter of Maryam Rajavi, a leader of the exiled dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq<\/a> (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<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some hope that Maryam Rajavi will become modern Iran\u2019s first female leader. Photograph: Siavosh Hosseini\/SOPA Images\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cUnless concrete action is taken, this is just going to escalate,\u201d Rajabi said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Det Supt Katie Harber, who leads policing in the borough, said: \u201cLondon is a global city and the impact of events that take place thousands of miles away play out locally in the capital.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understand the fears that many people in our Iranian communities may have.\u201d<\/p>\n The concerns come amid broader heightened tensions linked to the Iran war. Last week, authorities banned a longstanding al-Quds Day march<\/a> as well as planned counterprotests, citing high risks of public disorder.<\/p>\n In early March, police arrested four men suspected of spying for Iran<\/a>. Two of the men were charged<\/a> on Wednesday. On Friday, two people, one of them Iranian, were arrested after they allegedly tried to enter the Faslane<\/a> nuclear submarine base in Scotland.<\/p>\n British-Iranians living in the UK have urged Keir Starmer not to let the UK get drawn further into the conflict<\/a>. After the death of Iran\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n Protesters hold Iranian flags and pictures of Ali Khamenei and Mojtaba Khamenei during the al-Quds Day rally in Albert Embankment last week. Photograph: Vuk Valcic\/SOPA Images\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n A recent petition on Change.org called on the Home Office to investigate UK supporter groups of Reza Pahlavi, an exiled son of Iran\u2019s former pro-western monarch, and to \u201cprotect communities\u201d including Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds and others \u201cfrom intimidation and threats of violence\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n When asked by CNN about online harassment from individuals claiming to be Pahlavi supporters, Pahlavi said: \u201cI\u2019ve always spoken against any kind of political violence or intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cnot possible\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be very aware that the regime used any opportunity to spread this narrative that there\u2019s a big division between Iranian opposition and [that] they can not sit around one table,\u201d Beheshti said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a very famous narrative that the regime really wants to spread, by that telling to the international community we don\u2019t have a replacement,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Beheshti has previously staged a two-year protest outside the Foreign Office<\/a> and was warned last year by authorities that he might be a target<\/a> after the Israeli embassy in London was the target of an alleged terror plot.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For Laila Jazayeri, the director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, Finchley had become a \u201cno-go\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like, what do you call it? An atmosphere of terror that we have in Iran. It\u2019s so intense,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Jazayeri hopes Rajavi<\/a> will become modern Iran\u2019s first female leader and has called on the British government to proscribe Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards \u2013 which former UK leaders have previously rejected<\/a>.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, Jazayeri said she has spoken with police. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel safe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranians living in the UK have expressed safety concerns to authorities amid heightened tensions linked to the conflict…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-489918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}