Curious man with a thick black beard and hair tied back in a bun. ‘Are you a celebrity?’ He asks, his English is perfect but the accent is unmistakably Iranian. His clothes are dark, but he is wearing rolled-up tracksuit bottoms and modern trainers. Look at the Tehran theocrat and the London hipster.
He spotted Kasra Arabi, director of the campaign group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), and me posing for a photograph outside the gates of the Islamic Centre in England.
It is a registered charity that describes itself as a “religious and cultural centre” “aimed at providing services to members of the Muslim community, in particular, and the wider community”.
But in reality, the huge white building behind railings and trees is the de facto British headquarters of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and it is clear that people here are keen to protect their privacy.
When we finish our session, the bearded man takes a photo of us with his phone and then we follow him, walking a few hundred metres down the street and around a corner. He is what Iranians call a ‘nocheh’, a man (and it is always a man) who is paid to guard the outside of the governing compound.
—So why were you taking pictures? He asks as we close it and continue walking.
This bearded man, called “nocheh” by Iranians, is a man paid to guard the outside of a government building, in this case the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, north-west London.
Later we see him standing across the street tapping his phone. “Our data is sent straight to Tehran,” Kasra and I joke. We eventually move on.
The centre, located on a quiet street in Maida Vale, north-west London, was the second stop on my tour of what I dubbed ‘Little Tehran’, an area of the capital where the Islamic Republic maintains several institutions. It used to spread its damaging and destructive influence across Britain.
And Iran has rarely been more bellicose. Since the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran late last month, the world has been waiting to see how the Middle East’s saddest theocracy will respond.
Our first stop, just a few minutes ago, was the School of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a few blocks away. It was a low building, made of beige brick and with a white sloping roof. It had a sign with the name of the institution, but it has been removed.
Ofsted has deemed the school “inadequate” four times since 2016. I’m not surprised. In July 2022, video footage emerged of a line of students, aged between eight and 15, playing what Kasra described as propaganda music affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In the film, the children swear allegiance to Khamenei. “We await you under the flag of our leader,” they chirp. Then, coldly, they plead: “Do not consider me too small, from 313 I will answer the call.” This refers to the 313 mythical “special commanders” of Shiite theology, who will rise from the dead to wage an apocalyptic war against those deemed infidels.
Kasra said: “This is music designed to radicalize children, and he should know that he is an IRGC expert.”
Among these divine powers from beyond is Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the Americans in January 2020. He was the leader of the IRGC’s feared Quds Force, known for its operations abroad and designated a terrorist organization by the United States.
Following Soleimani’s death, the Islamic Centre of England held a candlelight vigil in his honour, describing him as a “great martyr”. The Charity Commission reprimanded it for putting its reputation at risk by organising the event.
In 2022, when protests erupted in Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody after being arrested for not wearing a hijab, the center’s director, Seyed Hashem Mousavi, described protesters as “soldiers of Satan” and women who removed their hijabs as “poison.”
Mousavi is Khamenei’s personal representative in the UK. In fact, the Centre’s “constitutions” require its Director to always play this role.
It is important to understand what this means. The traditional route of diplomatic relations between Iran and the UK follows a clear chain of command: from the supreme leader to the Iranian president, the foreign minister and then the ambassador in London.
But as director of the Islamic Centre in England, Mousavi does not have to worry about that: he reports directly to the Supreme Leader. A truly strong man.
The last stop on our tour of Little Tehran is the Islamic College of London, two and a half miles north of the centre. Behind the red brick façade, the college teaches “Islamic Studies” and its degree programmes are accredited by Middlesex University until 2023.
Qasra tells me he is affiliated with the Iran-based Al-Mustafa International University – a claim echoed by pro-government Persian news websites – and is affiliated with the IRGC.
In the words of Al Mustafa’s “Vice President for International Communications,” Mohsen Ghanbari, an academic, “our graduates are known as soldiers and sons of Imam Khomeini in many countries around the world.”
In December 2020, the US government described Al-Mustafa as a “recruiting platform for the IRGC Quds Force” and sanctioned it under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Kasra tells me that it “radicalizes and recruits for IRGC militias in the Middle East and for cells elsewhere.”
“I can’t believe this place is still open,” he added. Many will surely echo that sentiment.
Author David Patrikarkos of London Islamic College in Willesden, who teaches “Islamic Studies”. His degree programmes have been validated by Middlesex University until 2023
And what makes the situation even more absurd is that the centre is a charity and the university is run by a charitable trust, which receives hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. During Covid, the university received £205,000 in licence payments and the Islamic Centre just under £250,000. And this after Khamenei banned vaccines in the UK and claimed the pandemic was a “Zionist biological weapon” and that Jews were in “alliance with demons”.
The Charity Commission is in the midst of an ongoing investigation into the Islamic Centre for England, but since the inquiry first opened in November 2022, the Policy Exchange think tank, among others, has criticised its “snail-paced” approach.
In response, the commission explained that it had appointed an interim director at the centre and attributed the length of the investigation to a judicial challenge to that appointment.
Kasra, however, told me that when he spoke to a source within the commission, they were direct.
“No one wants to touch it for fear of being branded an Islamophobe,” they told him. “Then your career is over.” But although the authorities are invisible, the pernicious influence of the Iranian regime is spreading far beyond our tiny Tehran.
It is outrageous that IRGC commanders have publicly made anti-Semitic speeches to British students and attempted to co-opt them into becoming “agents of influence.”
Two of them took place online, but one was an in-person event at the Qanun Tawheed Islamic Centre in west London – again, the killing of Soleimani – where the crowd chanted: “Death to Israel.”
At another event organised by Britain’s Islamic Students Association, an IRGC commander told students that the Holocaust was “fake” and urged the audience to join the “beautiful list of soldiers”. He ordered them to join his all-out army “to put an end to the oppressors and occupiers, the Zionists and the Jews all over the world”.
Another IRGC commander, Hossein Yekta, encouraged students to “raise the flag of Islamic revolution, Islam and martyrdom” and become “soft warfare officers” for Iran. What is terrifyingly clear is that the IRGC has now developed an extensive structure in the UK.
It is run primarily by Iranian agents but also includes British Islamists, who swear allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei, and Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. They subscribe to an expansionist Islamic ideology aimed at establishing Sharia law worldwide, in clear opposition to British values.
And that’s not all. As well as redoubling efforts to foment extremism and homegrown extremism in the UK, the Islamic Republic’s government is now bringing violence directly to our streets.
In 2022, the UK government identified at least 10 credible threats from Iran to kill or kidnap British people or British residents.
A year later, anti-terror police said that number had risen to 15. And just last January, Britain imposed new sanctions on members of an IRGC unit that tried to kill two presenters for Iran International, a UK-based television channel critical of the Tehran regime.
Supporters of an anti-Iran demonstration against then Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi near Downing Street in 2021
The government tried again in April, when a reporter for the Pauria Gerati television channel was stabbed four times in Wimbledon, south-west London. Eastern European mercenaries flew to London, attacked the journalist and left hours later.
And yet the British government refuses to ban the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. After the assassination attempt, then-Foreign Secretary David Cameron announced that the UK was not interested in banning the group. The (perhaps unintended) message seems to be: “The IRGC can operate on British soil with impunity.”
Tehran’s killers will return, which is why sanctions are important. It will provide clear guidance to the government and the Charity Commission on how to tackle the threat. It will give local communities, police forces, teachers and councils the tools they need to detect and prevent further radicalisation.
It is a scandal that the authorities still refuse to take the threat seriously. Why are these institutions allowed to continue to radicalise children? Why does Britain allow IRGC representatives to bring violence to our streets and their commanders to come here and convert students?
Germany has recently taken its own stance against regime networks. The Islamic Centre in Hamburg was under investigation by authorities for alleged links to Tehran’s mullahs and Hezbollah terrorists. The centre was closed last month after it was deemed unconstitutional.
Kasra has worked with German authorities on the Arab investigation and is keen to see the same happen here. “The Germans acted quickly and decisively,” he says. “Why can’t we do the same here? There is momentum for it now and it is very important that we act.”
He is right: Britain is in the eyes of the Islamic Republic of Iran. After some vague hopes in recent years that reformists inside Tehran might win, that dream is dead. It is now dominated by fanatics. Attempts to please or appease them will fail. We must understand that the regime is a clear and immediate danger, not only abroad but also at home.
It is time to close these institutions, sanction the IRGC and expel Iranian agents from Britain. The costs of inaction are already severe and will only get worse with time.
It is time for both the British and the Iranians to end the rebellion and violence on our streets.
