Iranians living in the UK have been blackmailed into attending anti-Israel protests by regime agents threatening to harm their relatives back home, the JC can reveal.
Dissidents in Britain have told this newspaper they have received calls from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents demanding they attend protests.
Expats’ relatives being held by the regime have been forced to speak to them on the phone to ensure they comply.
Some of the expats had been selected for blackmail after being spotted at opposition demonstrations against the regime in London.
In a number of cases the officers from the IRGC Intelligence Organisation and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence have ordered the dissidents to provide proof of their attendance at the anti-Israel protests by posting photos on social media.
Politicians across the political spectrum have raised concerned over the “disturbing evidence of transnational repression by Iran”.
The revelations come after the recent proscription of the IRGC by the British government and amid calls for further action to stop Islamic Republic activities in the UK.
The JC has spoken to four British-Iranian nationals who have received the blackmail calls from regime agents.
One who asked to be identified only as Sam over fears for his family’s safety, said his sister was arrested for participating in anti-regime protests in Iran in January.
She was questioned about Sam’s political activities in the UK.
Sam said: “They showed her photographs from Instagram of me protesting against the regime in London.
“They accused her of spying for Israel.”
Sam, who lives in London, received an unexpected WhatsApp call from an Iranian number in June.
He said; “My sister was on the line. I was shocked because I knew she was still in jail.
“She begged me to speak to someone who she said was trying to help her situation.”
Sam said a man then took over the call and began questioning him about his political activities in Britain. “He spoke in a very calm tone and asked me whether I wanted to help my sister,” Sam said.
“He said that if I did, I needed to prove that I did not support a war against the regime. He told me I needed to participate in anti-war, anti-Netanyahu and ‘pro-resistance’ protests in London.
“He was very specific about which protests I should attend. He named a couple of London-based pro-Palestinian organisations.”
He said the caller demanded evidence that he had followed the instructions, telling him to post photographs of himself participating in demonstrations on social media.
Sam was ordered to remove anti-regime material from his social-media accounts and tell friends that he had been wrong to support opposition groups campaigning against the Islamic Republic.
Among the organisations Sam said the man specifically encouraged him to support were the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Stop the War Coalition.
There is no suggestion that either organisation was aware of the Iranian blackmail operation or any demonstrators being forced to attend under duress.
Some of the protests have received extensive coverage from Iranian state media, including domestic and international state television channels.
Footage broadcast by Iranian television from demonstrations in London has included protesters carrying images of the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, while photographs published by the British campaign groups themselves have focused on their own supporters and messaging.
Sam said he ultimately complied with the blackmailer’s demands, attending one of the rallies in June and posting photographs from it on his social-media accounts.
He said his sister has not been released.
“All I got was that many of my close friends removed me from their social media,” he recalls. “They could not accept what looked like such a sudden change of sides.”
Another British-Iranian who spoke to the JC – calling herself Sara to hide her identity to protect her family – was also the target of blackmail attempting using threats to relatives detained in the Islamic Republic.
She said some of her relatives had been detained by the regime even though they are not politically active, including her brother, who had been imprisoned since May despite having no history of activism.
Sara said: “He has not done anything. He was targeted because of my husband’s political activities here in the UK.”
Sara said that in June her mother contacted her from Iran with a message from the official handling her brother’s case. “My mother told me that the case officer met my parents in Iran and specifically talked about my husband’s activities.
“He asked them to pass on the message that if we wanted my brother to be released, both my husband and I should participate in an anti-Israel protest.”
According to Sara, her parents were given details of a specific demonstration in London that she and her husband were expected to attend.
She said they were encouraged to attend events associated with the Stop the War Coalition and the Socialist Workers Party, including a rally outside the “International Conference Against War” in London in June 2026.
Sara said she complied and attended the demonstration.
She said: “When I was there, I hated myself. That was not me. The environment was so different from our world. We, as Iranians in the diaspora, are fighting for a better future for Iran, with normal relations with Israel and everyone else.
“Inside that crowd, I felt as though I was back in Iran, at one of the state-backed pro-Hamas rallies.”
She says that she was told to provide proof of her attendance by posting pictures online.
“I felt horrible when I posted the photos on my social media
“It attracted a lot of anger from my fellow Iranians, who now see me as a traitor.
“Some of them even took screenshots of my posts, put them on public social-media accounts and called me a regime spy.”
Her brother remains in detention.
A third British-Iranian dual national was ordered to attend a protest outside RAF Fairford last month.
The source, who also requested anonymity because of fears for relatives in Iran, said Iranian authorities offered the prospect of releasing a detained family member in exchanging for attending an anti-war demonstration outside the RAF base.
Regime supporter with poster of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei at demonstration in Tehran (Majid Saeedi/Getty)Getty Images
According to the source, the regime instruction was to join calls for Andy Burnham to seek an end to US access to the base in connection with the war with Iran.
The source refused to attend.
Footage reviewed by the JC from the demonstration shows some participants carrying flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The presence of the flags does not establish that those protesters had any connection to the alleged instructions described by the JC’s sources.
The JC has also seen social-media posts by other Iranian nationals living in Britain who had previously publicly supported anti-regime protesters in Iran and called for political change, but who since May have posted material showing themselves attending demonstrations organised by some of the campaigns named by the sources.
The JC approached those individuals to ask about the apparent change in their public positions. They declined to discuss the matter, citing fears about possible consequences.
The JC has not established that those individuals were subjected to the same alleged pressure described by Sam, Sara and the other sources.
None of the British-Iranians who described the alleged approaches to the JC said they had reported them to British authorities.
They said they feared that doing so could have consequences for relatives still in Iran and were uncertain about how to explain the circumstances to police.
“What should I tell a police officer? Where should I start?” Sara said. “It’s a very different world and they cannot even understand it.”
Lord Polak, Honorary President of Conservative Friends of Israel, reacted by calling for the government to take further action against Iran’s activities on British soil.
The Tory peer said: “It will come as no surprise to any honest observer of the pro-Palestine movement to learn about the insidious and nefarious involvement of the Iranian regime in artificially inflating its presence.
Conservative peer Lord Polak[Missing Credit]
“Far too many so-called liberals and progressive activists are acting, sometimes inadvertently, as useful idiots for a wicked, cruel and capricious regime which terrorises its neighbours and its own people.
“This is exactly why Conservatives have been calling on the government to fully proscribe the IRGC and why we called on ministers to go even further than they have done to fight back against Tehran’s attempts to destabilise our democracy.”
Labour MP Luke Akehurst[Missing Credit]
Labour’s Luke Akehurst warned against the attempt to inject extremism into Britain.
The MP said: “This is extremely disturbing evidence of transnational repression by Iran being used both to blackmail the Iranian diaspora in the UK and to try to affect political debate about the Middle East here by astroturfing demonstrations with reluctant participants.”
The Iranian embassy in London has recently launched a campaign called “Jaan Fada”, translated as “Sacrifice for Iran”, calling on Iranians living in Britain to register their names and state how they are prepared to confront what it describes as “the invaders”.
One London-based Iranian who recently attended an anti-Israel protest told the JC that they had participated despite not supporting its message, in an effort to create a visible record of apparent support for the Islamic Republic.
The dual national said they feared that, if they travelled to Iran and were stopped or questioned by the authorities, photographs of them attending the demonstration could be used to convince officials that they were sympathetic to the regime.
“I wanted to have something I could show them if I was stopped in Iran,” the individual told the JC. “I could show them the photos and pretend I was on their side.”
The Home Office said: “We take the threat posed by Iran incredibly seriously. Police and security services work tirelessly to stop such threats. Any attempt to intimidate or harm individuals in the UK will never be tolerated."
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