Senior commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been found promoting their radical ideology in London.
Operating from a converted church in the West London district of Hammersmith, the Islamic Student Association of Britain has hosted at least eight high-ranking IRGC officials and commanders since 2020, a Jewish Chronicle investigation revealed.
Some of those hosted online speakers are under British sanctions for human-rights abuses and some, including Saeed Ghasemi and Hossein Yekta—both of the notorious Tehran plainclothes division Lebas Shakhsi—have openly endorsed violent ideologies during their talks to British students.
A top commander in the IRGC, Ghasemi was revealed to have ties to training Al-Qaeda terrorists before 9/11, bragging that they “established Muslim jihadi units” alongside the terror group.
According to recordings obtained by the Chronicle, Ghasemi heralded an “apocalyptic war” between the Iranian regime and its adversaries during an online lecture that the Islamic Student Association hosted. He claimed that the IRGC would have taken control of European countries had it not been “betrayed.”
“The one that the Jews say happened is fake. The real Holocaust happened in my country in the First World War, 1917-19 when the UK occupied Iran,” he added.
Yekta propagated conspiracy theories linking Jews to various societal issues, such as the existence of homosexuality and environmental destruction.
He proclaimed that the “era of the Jews” would soon come to an end and urged students to become “holy warriors.”
A source close to Suella Braverman, the British home secretary, has confirmed that she believes Iran to be the “biggest threat” to the country’s national security, the Sunday Times reported.
The British government does not have the IRCG on its list of proscribed terrorist groups. The United States designated the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April 2019.
