Demonstrators hung a banner from a Tehran bridge saying ‘Vahid is our voice’
Anti-Iranian regime activist Vahid Beheshti said he was inspired to see a show of support for his campaign from inside the country after protesters hung a banner on a Tehran bridge saying “Vahid is our voice”.
The human rights activist, who is a native of Iran, was arrested there twice before escaping to the UK more than 24 years ago.
He has been staging a sit-in protest round the clock for almost a year outside the Foreign Office to call for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be officially listed as a terrorist group.
The banner appeared days after Mr Beheshti returned from a trip to Israel earlier this month where he addressed the Knesset, telling members the populations of both countries needed each other in their fight against Iran’s “terrorist regime”.
He said the “brave people of Iran risked their lives” once again to stage the protest.
He told media: “[The banner] was hung from one of the bridges in Iran and said ‘Vahid is our voice’ and ‘we stand with Israel’, so they embraced what I said in Israel.”
Mr Beheshti, 46, began his protest outside the Foreign Office last February with a hunger strike, but was forced to call it off after being admitted to hospital in May.
He remains camped outside the building in central London and said attacks on him, both online and in person, have escalated since Hamas launched its assault on Gaza on October 7.
“There are about 40,000 X accounts working against me constantly,” he said.
“The [cyber] attacks have escalated since October 7. Because now I have another crime on top of my crime. My new crime is supporting Israel.
“We have reported a few of them to the counterterrorism police. They arrested a few of them.”
In one of the most serious in-person incidents in mid-October a pro-Palestinian protester taking part in a march threatened to behead him for displaying an Israeli flag at his camp.
“He put his finger on his neck and he said to me ‘I am going to cut your neck’,” Mr Beheshti said,
When police arrested him they found a big knife in his bag, he said, adding: “There were 120 officers surrounding me to protect me. I was so lucky. I wouldn’t be here talking to you now.”
The incident was one of three attacks he suffered that day.
He said after that the head of the counterterrorism unit in London approached him to persuade him to pause his sit in.
“He came himself here to speak to me and brought all the reasons for me not to be here for four weeks or five weeks,” Mr Beheshti told media.
“He said then I can come back here. I asked why four weeks? He said for the situation to calm down.
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