There are moments in the life of a democracy when ambiguity becomes complicity. On Sunday, in the heart of London, such a moment unfolded with eerie precision and devastating clarity. During the annual Quds Day rally – an event imported from the revolutionary streets of Tehran – demonstrators hoisted images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a city that prides itself on liberty, tolerance, and pluralism, the figurehead of a regime known for repression, hostage diplomacy, antisemitism, and extraterritorial assassination plots was paraded as an icon of defiance. One might ask, defiance of what? Of Zionism? Of oppression? No. Of Britain itself: its laws, its values, its sovereignty.
The silence of the British state is damning
Quds Day, conceived by Ayatollah Khomeini in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is not a protest in the conventional sense. It is not an organic call for justice or peace.
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