Green Party deputy defends presence at protest supporting the Ayatollah regime
Mothin Ali, who claims he is "proudly anti-war", seen at pro-Tehran weekend rally where chants included 'Death to America! Death to Israel!'
The deputy leader of the Green Party is defending his appearance at a pro-Iranian regime rally on Saturday 28 February, which saw chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to the IDF” with claims he is “proudly anti-war”.
Mothin Ali was pictured at the rally in central London, which protested the assassination of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, as part of a series of Israeli and US missile strikes on the country.
Alongside flags waved in support of the repressive terror regime, members of the crowd chanted “Death to America”, “Allahu Akbar!” “Khamenei you make us proud!”, “martyrs” and “Baby killers!”
An American flag was stamped on and later set alight, as was the lion and sun flag, the banner symbolising Iranian freedom. Protestors carried posters claiming “We must globalise our resistance to US and Zionist terrorism! Pedo hands off Iran”, and images of the Ayatollah with the words “choose the right side of history”.
In a social media post on Twitter/X on Sunday 1 March, Ali insisted he was “proudly anti-war”, accusing the US and Israel of a “deplorable” and “unilateral decision in the midst of negotiations to kill the Iranian leader.”
Green MP Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) defended Ali on Monday, saying her understanding was that he “attended an anti-war protest. Mothin is anti-war. He believes peace can only be achieved through peaceful means” adding that her party believed the actions of the US and Israeli governments against Iran were an “illegal war” and “not making the world a safer place.”
Among the groups listed as organisers of the Saturday rally was the “Islamic Human Right Commission”, which was described by William Shawcross in his 2023 Independent Review of the Prevent programme as “an Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime”. In a press release on Sunday, the IHRC mourned the passing of Khamenei, whom they described as “a rare role model…an erudite, principled, spiritual and stoic individual” and “someone who resisted oppression and stood on the right side of history”. In a few week’s time the IHRC is again due to host its annual “Al Quds Day” march through central London. The concept of Al Quds Day was created by former Iranian regime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the 1980s.
Green party leader Zack Polanski was last year urged to sack Ali after his deputy responded to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by posting the message “White supremacist european settler colonialism must end!!” on Twitter/X, using Hamas’s Al Aqsa Flood hashtag. The account was later deleted.
In a separate video filmed on 7 October, Ali called Gaza “the biggest concentration camp the world has ever seen”, adding “People of the world, stay strong. Support Palestine, support the right of indigenous people to have freedom and to fight back against occupiers.”
Ali’s appearance at the rally came after Polanski, speaking on BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to condemn the strikes on Iran after branding the US and Israel ‘rogue states’.
In response, David Taylor, Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, shared a video of Polanski exactly three years earlier, responding to the “Women Life Freedom” mass-protests in Iran. At the time Polanski said: “The Iranian people in huge numbers are asking us to ‘Be Our Voice.’ We must do far more to support fundamental rights in Iran. And the Iranian Regime must stop the arrests, detentions and executions.”
Taylor asked: “What happened Zack? Why did you stop listening to the Iranian people?”
Last week a Jewish communal alliance urged the government to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Muslim Brotherhood, warning that existing measures fall short of protecting UK security. Following that briefing, the We Believe Alliance has begun a petition calling on the UK government to proscribe both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Muslim Brotherhood, which can be viewed here.
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