Pro-Iran protesters from the Union of Islamic Student Association in Europe branded the United States a “terrorist state” outside the American embassy in London.
Protesters outside the modernist building in Vauxhall, in the south of the capital, branded U.S. President Donald Trump a “terrorist” and accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of “standing with terrorism”.
The protest was more than a hundred strong, according to reports, with demonstrators waving Iranian, Iraqi, and Palestinian flags, and carrying placards praising Qasem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who was killed in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.
Footage disseminated by Iranian state television shows the protesters chanting “USA’s a terrorist state” and denouncing the country as a “deceitful, lying, rogue country that needs to be brought into line with every civilised country in the world, it is showing itself as completely uncivilised”.
Some attendees interviewed by the propaganda outlet also took aim at the United Kingdom as the “Little Satan” to America’s “Great Satan”, and excoriated “Leavers of power” — a reference to Brexit-supporting politicians — such as Dominic Raab, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary.
“[N]othing is sacred to these people,” asserted one, adding that “they have sold their souls to the Devil, they are a part and parcel of that Devil”.
Soleimani supporters in London had previously attended a mass memorial for him in the Islamic Centre of England, whose director — who bills himself as a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader — also published a message of condolence praising him as an “honourable Islamic commander”.
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, who has denounced Soleimani’s killing as an “assassination”, has some history with the Islamic Centre, having attended an event commemorating the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution which put the mullahs in power in Iran the year before he became Labour leader.
The far-leftist praised “the inclusivity, the tolerance, and the acceptance of other faiths, other traditions, and other ethnic groupings within Iran” during his speech at the event — appearing to forget the Islamic Republic’s imposition of the death penalty on apostates and homosexuals, among others.