When Tehran’s Hatred Reaches Britain’s Streets |
Antisemitism rarely announces itself honestly. It prefers disguise. Today it often appears draped in the language of “resistance,” clothed in the slogans of protest, and sheltered by the claim that hostility to “Zionists” has nothing to do with hostility to Jews. That claim is becoming harder to sustain. In Britain and across Europe, antisemitic incidents are rising in an atmosphere shaped in no small part by the Islamic Republic’s propaganda, its sympathisers, and the broader culture of agitation that has made hatred of Israel – and too often of Jews – seem not only acceptable, but virtuous.
The British authorities appear, at last, to understand that something serious is happening. Last week, the British Home Secretary approved the ban on the Al Quds Day march in London after the Metropolitan Police warned of a serious risk of public disorder. Reuters reported that it was the first such ban in fourteen years. The reasons given were telling: extreme tensions, the risk of confrontation, prior arrests linked to support for terrorist organisations and antisemitic offences, and broader concerns about Iranian threats in the UK. That is not the profile of an ordinary protest. It is the profile of a movement that has become a public-order problem.
Even with the march banned, the static rally that followed told its own story. Around 1,000 officers were deployed. Lambeth Bridge was closed. Arrests were made. Police began investigating chants including “death to the IDF,” alongside other allegedly threatening or abusive statements. London is not merely hosting political disagreement. It is becoming a stage on which violent and sectarian rhetoric is performed in public, often under the pretence that it is no more than principled opposition to Israeli policy.
The claim that all this can be neatly separated from antisemitism has become increasingly implausible. In North Finchley, a Jewish man in his seventies was reportedly abused, assaulted, and pushed into the path of a moving car. Police are treating it as a racially aggravated assault. According to the Jewish Chronicle, the victim said his attacker shouted that he wanted Jews to die. This was not a dispute about statehood or borders. It was an attack on a Jew in London because he was a Jew. And while not every act of violence can be traced directly to a chant or a rally, it would be foolish to ignore the wider atmosphere in which such attacks take place. Public rhetoric matters. It shapes what people feel able to say, and eventually what some feel entitled to do.
The problem is not confined to Britain. In recent days, a synagogue in Michigan was attacked in what the FBI described as targeted violence against the Jewish community. A synagogue in Rotterdam was damaged in what Dutch police are investigating as suspected arson. AP reported that a Jewish organisation said an Islamist group had posted a video claiming responsibility and linking the incident to other recent synagogue attacks. One should be careful with attribution. Not every case is connected, and not every outrage belongs to the same chain of command. But the pattern is there all the same: Jews are being targeted in a climate that has become more permissive towards antisemitic hatred, just as the regional confrontation with Iran deepens and the rhetoric of its supporters becomes more extreme.
What makes this especially important is the position of Iranian dissidents in Britain and elsewhere. For years, the Islamic Republic has pursued its opponents abroad through surveillance, intimidation, and covert action. That is not new. What is changing is the way in which Jewish communities and anti-regime Iranians increasingly find themselves in the same line of fire. The Guardian reported this month that four men, including one Iranian national and three dual British-Iranian nationals, were arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran and targeting Jewish individuals and synagogues in London. That is a significant development. It suggests that, in the regime’s worldview, Jews, Israelis, and dissident Iranians are all part of the same enemy camp.
That overlap is now visible in public life. At recent demonstrations in London, there has been a clear divide between Iranians who support the regime and those who support its overthrow. Some dissidents have openly aligned themselves with Israel, not out of convenience, but because they understand the Islamic Republic for what it is. The Jewish Chroniclereported that Iranian dissidents moved to defend the Israeli embassy in Kensington from an anti-Zionist crowd, with one saying that Iranians had a duty to stand with their “Jewish brothers and sisters.” That solidarity matters. It cuts directly against the regime’s claim that hatred of Israel is the natural expression of the Iranian people rather than the imposed doctrine of a clerical state.
And because it cuts against that doctrine, it carries a cost. Iranian dissidents who support Israel now place themselves at risk not only from the regime itself, but from the broader culture of intimidation created by its supporters abroad. The same atmosphere that makes crowds comfortable chanting about death also makes it easier to target the Iranian exile who waves an Israeli flag, or the dissident who refuses to submit to the regime’s moral blackmail. These people are not bystanders. They are among the first to feel the consequences of Tehran’s hatred when it spills onto foreign streets.
This is why the old formula – that these are merely protests about foreign policy – no longer holds. Some protests are exactly that. Others are not. Some become platforms for intimidation, places where anti-Zionism serves as a respectable cover for anti-Jewish hostility, and where support for the Islamic Republic merges with contempt for those Iranians who reject it. When that happens, the state should stop pretending that it is dealing with neutral political expression. It is dealing with a public atmosphere that risks deepening antisemitic and sectarian tension.
Britain does not need to choose between civil liberty and public safety. It can protect lawful protest while drawing a clear line against incitement, intimidation, and organised hatred. That is what serious states do. If Jewish Londoners are being abused and pushed into traffic, if synagogues across the West are again becoming targets, and if Iranian dissidents who stand with Israel now find themselves exposed to the same violence and intimidation, then the time for euphemism is over. Tehran’s war on Jews – and on free Iranians – is no longer something that happens only elsewhere. It has found expression here too.