by Hannah Baldock
Radicals Promote Tehran’s Narrative on Britain’s Streets
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Protesters at a poorly attended Al Quds protest in London promote anti-Israel and anti-Western messaging on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran on March 15, 2026.(Hannah Baldock) |
A young woman stands before me, holding a placard honoring Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s recently killed supreme leader, emblazoned with the slogan “The Right Side of History.” Near her, tiny girl in a black hijab maybe five years old, hands out campaign cards as part of a demonstration marking Al-Quds Day—an annual, Iran-initiated event held at the end of Ramadan to mobilize global opposition to Israel and express solidarity with Palestinians. It is Sunday, March 15, 2026, and we are standing on the south bank of the River Thames opposite the U.K. Parliament. The young woman is a volunteer steward with the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), the London-based Islamist charity that organizes the annual rally.
Death to America, death to Israel.
The IHRC claimed that 15,000 attended the rally, when even Islamist-friendly media placed the figure in the hundreds. This brazen disinformation from IHRC summed up the propaganda exercise, where images on display and speeches conjured fantasies of a civilizational struggle between righteous Muslims and the “Epstein class” of “pedophiles” attacking Iran.
As we speak, she tells me she admires Iran’s stance on “trying to stop a genocide in Palestine” and says she would consider living there. “I’m only here for my education,” she explains. When I ask if she was born in the U.K., she says yes.
“That’s sad. You must be very conflicted,” I respond.
“No, not conflicted at all,” she insists. As we talk, she defends Iran’s political system and dismisses reports of 30,000 killed in the regime’s January 2026 crackdown. “We understand it was about 2,000,” she says, “and they weren’t peaceful—they were put up to cause trouble by foreign powers.”
Speaking of trouble caused by foreign powers, the IHRC had planned a march through London until Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley requested that this year’s march be banned due to a “real risk of serious violence and disorder” amid warnings about possible Iranian-linked “sleeper cell” activity in the U.K. Rowley told BBC London that the rally is “a construct of the Khomeini regime in Iran, that creates a unique threat and provocation in the U.K.” A cross-party group of 90 politicians had also called for a full ban on Al Quds day protests, arguing they promoted extremist narratives and intimidation.
The event might have been banned altogether under new legislation such as the National Security Act 2023 and the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), but Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told MPs that while a march had been prohibited, a static protest could not legally be prevented. She also acknowledged that counter-terrorism police had arrested four individuals on March 6, 2026, under the National Security Act on suspicion of spying on Jewish communities for Iran.
An young woman displays a sign declaring that the repressive regime that has murdered thousands of citizens in the Islamic Republic of Iran is on “the right side of history.” In a conversation with Focus on Western Islamism correspondent Hannah Baldock, she declared that the protesters who were killed during recent protests in Iran were agitated by “foreign powers” and that the regime only killed about 2,000 people. Most sources state that the regime killed more than 30,000 protesters.
The Metropolitan Police—who warned organizers that expressions of support for banned groups or inflammatory slogans like “Globalize the Intifada” could lead to arrest—deployed around 1,000 officers at the rally. With numbers like this, they dwarf the rally enforcing barriers that seal off the Albert Embankment and nearby bridges. A police boat patrolled the Thames, which separates demonstrators from Iranian dissident groups such as the Lion Guard of Iran and the grassroots movement Stop the Hate who stand on the opposite bank
One protester ignores the warning against supporting terrorism and displays a sign reading “Boom Boom Tel Aviv,” prompting police to lead him away. Twelve others were arrested over the course of the day for offenses including public disorder, support for a proscribed organization, and threatening behavior.
On the Albert Embankment, Palestinian flags fly alongside banners of Lebanon and Iran. Protestors chant “Long Live Khamenei,” and “Long Live Mojtaba!” referring to the late Ayatollah’s son and successor. They also chant “Labbaik Ya Husayn” (“Here I am Oh Husayn”), an echo of the response to the cry of Imam Husayn ibn Ali (Mohammad’s grandson and the third imam in Twelver Shia Islam) who died at the Battle of Karbala in the year 680.
Rotating images displayed on LED screens on “digivans” near the rally include one depicting the graves of 168 alleged victims of a missile strike on a girls’ primary school in Minab. Another shows a mocked-up film poster for “World War Epstein” featuring Donald Trump, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the dead financier Jeffrey Epstein standing face-to-face with Ayatollahs Khomeini, Khamanei, and Mojtaba Khamanei.
At the head of the rally, I ask a striking attendee with flowing dark highlighted hair. I ask why she had come out in support of a regime that would not allow her to expose her hair. “Is she Iranian,” I wonder. She tells me she is Iraqi and attending to support Palestinians. Iran, she says, is “the only country and only regime that is trying to stop the genocide.”
“Khamanei, the leader who passed away, the way he speaks about women, he puts women on a pedestal. No other leader has,” she says before declaring. “Before you comment, look it up.” Using my iPhone, I find the quote on Facebook.
Still, I challenge her, noting that the regime’s actions against women like Mahsa Amini speak louder than words, and that Iraqi militias had allegedly been drafted in to shoot Iranian protestors. Sticking to the rally’s talking points, she blames the unrest in Iran on foreign forces.
“Go and see what bullets they found in the streets of Iran just now,” she says. “From the Israelis themselves, from Mossad themselves. Mossad agents in the protests were using Iranian protestors as shields.”
On stage, a speaker from the Revolutionary Communist Group repeats the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” while describing her arrest for using it at a protest the previous day by Sussex police. She tells the crowd that the police who arrested her acted “on behalf of the Zionists, in their endless endeavor to doxx and intimidate pro-Palestinian activists.” Clearly, this speaker did not just support the human rights of Gazans, but their jihad.
“So, they will try to silence us and intimidate us and deform our solidarity with Palestine into a purely humanitarian solidarity,” she yelled. “We cannot let them. Free Palestine!”
Another speaker from the Palestinian Youth Movement took the microphone to declare that Western and Israeli forces had killed “180 people” in a girls’ school in Minab, describing it as a deliberate tactic “to test people’s reaction and reaffirm that they can get away with the most barbaric forms of violence.” To buttress her case, she cited the Al-Ahli hospital explosion in Gaza in October 2023 as an example of the same tactic, despite reports from Human Rights Watch attributing it probably to a failed rocket launch of a projectile of a type used by Palestinian organizations.Israel at the time pointed to Islamic Jihad as the likely perpetrator.
The same speaker describes “186,000 martyrs” in Gaza, while figures from Gaza health authorities report over 71,000 deaths to date. Another speaker, a student who is facing trial in June for allegedly expressing support for Hamas, denounces the ‘racist warmongering agenda’ of the Labour government which she says is “advancing the interests of British imperialism of which Iran has been an obstacle since 1979’ and “hoping to get its share of the spoils.” An attendee, a Lebanese Scot, works the crowd, distributing leaflets with slogans including “Iran is not the Enemy…. the enemy is the imperialist pedophile war machine.” The materials include the claim Iran had “never attacked any nation unprovoked.” When challenged with examples such as Hezbollah attacks in Argentina, directed by Iran, he questions the evidence.
Punk rap artist Bob Vylan took the stage and told the crowd that the West is run by “cold-hearted monsters,” accused the government of “gaslighting” protesters, and branded the police “pigs.” He lamented what he called “Zionist influence” in Britain, declaring: “Whilst men like [Labour donor and vice-president of the Jewish Leadership Council] Trevor Chinn and [Jewish former investment banker and philanthropist] Stuart Roden, and organizations like Elnet (a non-profit that promotes links between Europe and Israel), continue to line the pockets of British politicians, we will continue to face prosecution for taking part in peaceful protests.” He concludes with chants of “Death, death, death to the IDF,” echoed by parts of the crowd. IHRC director Nazim Ali tells the crowd, “We also have one in Farsi,” before leading the crowd with chants of “Marg bar Âmrikâ, Marg bar Israel”—“Death to America, death to Israel.”
He concludes with chants of “Death, death, death to the IDF,” echoed by parts of the crowd. ‘We also have one in Farsi, which has been going for 50 years, chimes in IHRC director Nazim Ali: “Marg bar Âmrikâ, Marg bar Israel”—“Death to America, death to Israel.”
After the event, the Metropolitan Police reported that it would investigate the chants but suggested it’s unlikely they will arrest anyone. Vylan’s used the same chants to incite the crowd at Glastonbury Festival in 2025, which was broadcast live by the BBC. “When this language had been used previously, we sought advice from the CPS who determined that there would be insufficient evidence to take a case forward,” the Metropolitan Police announced.
Anti-Regime Protests
Across the river, the counter-protesters exhibited their contempt for the regime and hope for its ouster. Demonstrators held placards reading “This is the Final Battle! This is the Last Al Quds! Your Terrorist Leaders are Dead.”
The atmosphere was celebratory, with music and dancing. One woman who said she had left Iran after the 2022 protests said of the attempts by those at the main rally to minimize the scale of the regime’s recent repression. “They are not Iranians,” she said.
I realized she spoke the truth. What I witnessed on the other side of the river was a coalition of South Asian and Arab Islamist activists, revolutionary socialists, celebrity radicals, sectarian clerics and identity-driven hangers-on who sustained the IHRC’s pro-regime narrative. They promoted a notion—some no doubt unwittingly—that Islam (or the Iranian regime’s authoritarian iteration of it) should conquer all.
This was the message offered by IHRC’s director Nazim Ali, who told the crowd, “For us, Al-Quds Day is a day of Islam. This is not a day of Iran. It is a movement for Muslims around the world.” He added: “This is a war of truth against falsehood. This is a force of good against evil.”
Speaking with me after the rally, U.K.-based Iranian activist and journalist Potkin Azarmehr affirmed that the Al Quds rally I witnessed was sustained by non-Iranians.
“The regime has lasted this long because most of the support isn’t inside Iran, it’s outside Iran. There’s about 40 million Shia in Pakistan,” Azarmehr said. “Thirty-five of them were killed when they came out of the streets in Pakistan to mourn Khamenei. That’s how dedicated to the cause they are. Its’s because they are a persecuted minority in many Muslim countries, except maybe Iraq. They look at Iran like a sort of savior. They feel if they lose Iran, they are left unprotected.”
Azarmehr, founder of the first counter-protest to the Quds that took place in London in March 2003—attended by “about seven” people—noted that for the first time the 2026 counter-rally was as big as the rally itself. Fortunately, it got decent coverage with one participant telling GB News that, “We have many reasons to celebrate. This rotten regime is on the way out. This is probably the last Al Quds they’ll ever throw.” Asked what message he would send, he replied: “Wake up, grow up. Have peace and stop slaughtering your own people.”
Hannah Baldock is a journalist who specializes in radicalization, terrorism, and Islamism. She is a frequent contributor to Focus on Western Islamism.
Source: https://www.meforum.org/fwi/fwi-news/al-quds-protest-in-london-a-rally-for-ayatollahs-not-palestinians
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