Scottish Labour leader’s father posts tribute to ‘martyr’ Ayatollah Khamenei
Mohammad Sarwar praised Iran’s supreme leader after he was killed in US and Israel-backed airstrikes
Mohammad Sarwar, father of the Scottish Labour leader, has praised Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as “a strong voice of resistance” after he was killed in US and Israel-backed airstrikes.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died when his compound in Tehran was bombed on Saturday. Sarwar, a former Labour MP and ex-governor of Punjab in Pakistan, posted a tribute in Urdu to Khamenei on X, the Times reports.
In a television appearance on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show, his son Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, called for “urgent de-escalation” in the Middle East and warned that the conflict risked spreading further.
Speaking to the Press Association at Glasgow Airport, Anas Sarwar said he did not agree with his father’s comments. “He’s wrong,” the Scottish Labour leader said.
“My view is that the leader of Iran has been a brutal dictator that has obviously done many bad things to his own citizens, has threatened many of his neighbours, has funded countless attacks, has been behind several threats to our own country here, and I think there will be lots of people who have very strong views about what he was like as an individual, or what that regime was like.
“In terms of the broader situation, look, this is a really dangerous time. It’s a dangerous time, of course for Iran itself, but it’s a dangerous time for the entire region, and what needs to happen really quickly is a de-escalation and an end to the war.
“That means no nuclear capability for Iran, of course, but it also means freedom and peace and security for all the nations across the broader Middle East, and that has to be our priority.”
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