There are moments when language falters—when the suffering inflicted by tyranny outruns the reach of words. Yet silence is complicity. In writing this, I am not merely recording a regime’s cruelty; I am lending my voice to those who were brutalised and then consigned to a silence no one should have to bear. Much of what follows draws on first-hand observations gathered during covert access at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s apparatus—work that allowed me to document, in situ, what the regime works so hard to conceal.
The Islamic Republic is not simply authoritarian; it is an empire of fear, built on violence, deception, and the systematic crushing of human dignity. I have met Iranians who still cannot speak of what was done to them—who recoil at the memory of cold prison walls and the shadow of interrogators. Their silence is not weakness; it is the intended product of a calculated campaign to humiliate, terrify, and break the human spirit. Sexual violence—perhaps the most intimate and devastating of weapons—has been used not only to punish, but to erase: to render people too ashamed, too shattered, to resist.
In which an old villain — the lie — is put in the dock
There are few things more dangerous than a well-told lie. Not the clumsy, obvious sort of lie that collapses under its own absurdity, but the polished, persistent kind — the lie that wears the robes of righteousness and sits smugly in the courts of public opinion, nodding solemnly while entire peoples are slandered into silence.
Humanity, bless it, has a dreadful habit of first inventing monsters and then punishing those we have decided resemble them. For centuries, the Jewish people have borne the weight of fantastical accusations: blood-drinkers, Christ-killers, conspirators extraordinaire — the cast of characters assigned to them would shame a Gothic novel. And, as is the way with such things, what begins as a whisper over ale in the market square ends in the fire of pogrom, gas chamber, or rocket attack.
But it would be frightfully remiss to suppose that this tragic tale is the Jewish people’s alone. Alas, history is positively heaving with the bones of communities accused before they were attacked: Armenians branded as traitors; Tutsis called cockroaches; Roma dismissed as irredeemable thieves; Uyghurs cast as threats to social harmony; Yazidis vilified by fanatics. Words have always done the dirty work before the blades are drawn.
This paper proposes something rather radical in its simplicity: that we take such words seriously. Not in the precious, censorious sense — no one here is calling for a world of trigger warnings and speech codes — but in the moral and legal sense. When cultural libels, slanders, and tropes are orchestrated, broadcast, and institutionalised to dehumanise entire populations, they are not quaint artefacts of folklore. They are instruments — the ideological mortars before the physical ones fall.
Iran stands at a defining moment in its modern history. After more than four decades under the theocratic rule of the Islamic Republic, the convergence of deepening internal dissent and shifting geopolitical currents has created an historic opportunity for meaningful and lasting change. In light of this, we put forward a strategic proposal: the formation of a Transitional Government-in-Exile, founded upon the legal and constitutional framework of Iran’s 1906 Constitution, and headquartered — symbolically and securely — on property in Tel Aviv originally purchased by His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
This initiative is no mere gesture of protest. It is a serious political undertaking aimed at transferring moral and institutional legitimacy away from a regime that has long forfeited both. What is proposed here is not the restoration of monarchy, but the reassertion of lawful sovereignty — through a transitional regency under the moral auspices of the Pahlavi legacy, pending the eventual reconstitution of democratic governance in Iran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—once known chiefly for orchestrating foreign insurgencies and exporting theocratic revolution—has rapidly evolved into one of the world’s most dangerous cyber actors. Today, it wages a hybrid war that fuses digital sabotage with ideological subversion, and the United Kingdom has become one of its prime targets.
No longer limited to shadowy operations in Lebanon, Syria or Iraq, the IRGC now extends its reach deep into the digital arteries of the UK. British officials, academic institutions, journalists, dissidents, and entire communities have been subject to a concerted and increasingly aggressive campaign of espionage, hacking, intimidation, and psychological warfare. Its foot soldiers are not only IRGC cyber units in Tehran, but a web of proxies—hacker collectives, “activist” NGOs, fake media outlets, and social media avatars—all designed to erode Britain’s defences from within.
In 2022, the head of MI5 publicly disclosed that Iran had orchestrated at least ten abduction or assassination plots in the UK within a single year, describing Iran’s activities as “the most sustained hostile threat” from any state besides Russia. Much of this threat stems from the IRGC, which controls Iran’s intelligence apparatus and deploys both online and offline operatives. That same year, IRGC-linked hackers breached British parliamentary emails, targeted MPs critical of the regime, and penetrated university systems conducting research on Iran’s influence operations.
But digital intrusion is only half the story. The IRGC also exports disinformation and extremism—particularly to Britain’s Arab and Muslim communities—through online indoctrination campaigns aimed at spreading Tehran’s revolutionary ethos. These are not isolated incidents but part of a strategic effort to radicalise, polarise, and ultimately mobilise British audiences in service of Iran’s geopolitical objectives.
Iran’s clerical regime is waging a sophisticated campaign to reshape its influence across the Muslim world – including in Britain – by weaponising the Palestinian cause as a Trojan horse. Tehran seeks to don the mantle of Islamic leadership in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), outflanking Sunni rivals (notably Saudi Arabia) by casting support for Palestine and fierce anti-Zionism as the ultimate litmus test of Islamic legitimacy. This research brief examines how the Islamic Republic exploits transnational Sunni Islamist currents – particularly the South Asian Deobandi movement – to galvanize Muslim opinion against Israel and the West, thereby pressuring Sunni governments into ideological submission. It explores historical and ideological intersections between Deobandism and Iran’s 1979 revolutionary thought, Tehran’s covert partnerships with Deobandi networks in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and even the UK, and uses the recent example of Pakistan’s Grand Mufti calling for jihad on Israel to illustrate Iran’s strategy of framing neutrality as betrayal of the Ummah (global Muslim community). The brief highlights the geopolitical threat this poses to Saudi Arabia’s custodianship of Mecca and Medina, arguing that Iran’s aim is to present itself as the rightful leader of the Islamic world by recasting the Palestinian struggle as a moral yardstick for Muslim rulers.
In the wake of October 7 and amid a surge in antisemitic incidents across the UK, this policy briefing exposes a critical blind spot in charity regulation: the unchecked spread of disinformation by registered charities. With legal analysis, case studies, and international comparisons, Policy Briefing on Charity Regulation and Antisemitic Disinformation calls for urgent reforms to Charity Commission guidance. It offers a powerful argument that charitable status must not become a shield for misinformation or hate speech. This is a timely and essential roadmap for policymakers, regulators, and civil society actors seeking to uphold truth, public trust, and social cohesion in an age of digital distortion.
In early May 2025, Israel conducted a series of airstrikes deep inside Yemen, marking a significant and startling geographic expansion of its confrontation with Iran-aligned actors. On 6 May, Israeli fighter jets struck Sanaa’s international airport, reportedly rendering the Houthi-controlled facility inoperable. The operation was launched in direct retaliation for a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis two days earlier, which penetrated Israeli airspace and impacted near the perimeter of Ben Gurion Airport—the country’s primary international gateway—creating a large crater and sparking widespread alarm. This unprecedented development represented the first instance of a successful Houthi strike near Tel Aviv, underlining the transformation of the Red Sea and its environs into an active theatre in Iran’s expanding proxy war against Israel.
Israeli officials characterised the airstrike on Sanaa as a proportional response to an unprovoked attack by an Iranian proxy. The IDF described the targeted airport as a “central hub” for the transfer of Houthi weaponry and asserted that it would “continue to act and strike with force” against any group posing a threat to Israeli security. The escalation—ballistic missiles launched from Yemen into the heart of Israel, followed by retaliatory Israeli bombardment of Yemeni territory—caps a broader cycle of hostilities that began in late 2023. These hostilities have increasingly drawn both Israel and the United States into direct military operations against the Houthi movement in Yemen.
The most immediate and escalating threat facing the Jewish people and the State of Israel today does not emanate simply from the Islamic Republic of Iran as a sovereign entity — it emanates from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological praetorian guard of the regime. The IRGC is not merely a branch of Iran’s military. It is the regime’s religious militia, terror apparatus, and export arm of jihadist revolution. Its loyalty is not to the Iranian nation, nor to the well-being of its citizens, but to the revolutionary creed of Khomeinism — a doctrine that seeks the obliteration of Israel, the subjugation of the West, and the usurpation of Islam’s spiritual authority from Saudi Arabia to Qom.
The ayatollahs who rule from Tehran may sit atop a state, but their vision is not national — it is imperial and totalising. They see Iran as a base camp, not a country. The regime cares little for Iran’s prosperity or its people’s freedom. It cares above all for the perpetuation and spread of a revolutionary ideology protected and enforced by the IRGC.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s recent decision to suspend negotiations on a new UK–Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA) represents more than a temporary diplomatic pause — it marks a critical inflection point in the United Kingdom’s trade policy and international credibility.
This move, announced in the context of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, comes at a time when the UK faces intensifying global competition for technological advantage, supply chain resilience, and trade diversification. Suspending a high-value agreement with one of the world’s leading innovation economies threatens not only a trusted bilateral partnership but also risks undermining Britain’s long-term economic resilience, diplomatic capital, and strategic independence.
The UK–Israel trade relationship is not symbolic, marginal, or incidental. It is a substantive and future-facing partnership grounded in shared democratic values and proven economic synergies—particularly in sectors critical to the UK’s own growth agenda: life sciences, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, fintech, and green technology. Bilateral trade reached nearly £7 billion in 2022, and Israel remains a vital partner in NHS pharmaceutical supply chains, R&D collaboration, and high-value tech investment.