Iran supporters attack anti-regime protesters in embassy brawl
Anti-Iranian regime protesters were attacked outside the country's embassy in London on Friday.
The demonstrators were targeted by backers of the Iranian regime, the Telegraph understands.
The Metropolitan Police said that seven men have been arrested following the incident, and that two men were hospitalised.
The attack took place during an anti-regime protest outside the embassy, which is situated opposite Hyde Park. Witnesses told how men were seen lying on the floor bleeding and receiving treatment from paramedics, while others were arrested.
Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has spent decades consolidating his power by suppressing opposition and has transformed the country into a cleric-dominated, anti-Western and anti-Israel Islamic republic.
The regime is now locked in an ongoing and escalating war with Israel, which opposition groups hope could trigger the authoritarian regime to topple.
Credit: X
On Friday, protesters could also be seen flying an array of flags in support of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, including the pre-1979 Islamist revolution national flag.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a period of widespread protests that eventually led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Its supporters in the diaspora continue to advocate for the restoration of the monarchy in lieu of current leadership in Tehran.
Four Israel flags were also being flown by the encampment on Friday – though it is understood the incident is not linked to Israel.
Videos circulating on social media also show the protestors calling for an end to the Iranian regime.
Jeremy Selwyn, a 62-year-old freelance photographer, witnessed the incident and said that one of the men was 'very seriously injured'.
He said: 'I saw two chaps on the floor getting treatment from paramedics.
'One appeared to have very serious facial injuries and looked as if he had been hit around the head.
'The police turned up en masse. There must have been around 40 police officers and they arrested six men.
'It was a gang of men that were arrested. They knew what they were doing.'
He added that he spoke to another witness who said that 'there are always protestors' outside the embassy, but that 'recently gangs of men, presumably Iranian, come to harass them but today it was more than harassment. I think it became a bit of a brawl'.
The Iranian embassy in London has become a focal point for various protests regarding incidents of global interest, most notably in 2022, following the death of Mahsa Amini. She was detained by the Iranian morality police accused of violating the law requiring women to cover their body with loose clothing and to cover their hair with a hijab.
Her death sparked global protests and the embassy was the site of clashes with police as the crowd threw missiles at officers, seriously injuring at least five of them, and prompting the arrest of 12 protestors.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'Officers are on scene in Princes Gate, SW1 following an altercation during a protest.
'They were called to the location at 09:53hrs on Friday, 20 June. Conditions have since been put in place to prevent serious disorder. This stops protestors from gathering in the area until 13:00hrs on Sunday, 22 June.
'One man has been taken into police custody after he was arrested on suspicion of breaching the above conditions.'
'Seven other men remain in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm. The two men treated at the scene by the London Ambulance Service are in hospital. Their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.'
A London Ambulance Service spokesperson added: 'We were called at 9.56am today (20 June) to reports of an assault in Princes Gate, SW7.
'We sent a number of resources to the scene including ambulance crews, paramedics in fast response cars and our Tactical Response Unit.
'We treated two patients at the scene and took one to hospital and one to a major trauma centre.'
The attack comes amid the ongoing and escalating war between Israel and Iran as the countries continue to launch missile strikes. Donald Trump, the US president, said that he would decide in the next fortnight whether or not his country would intervene in the conflict.
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And we would have preferred the involvement of Congress. Our qualms do not mean we believe that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's oppressive and theocratic Iranian regime, which has fought proxy wars by propping up the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, should be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Nobody wants that to happen, beginning with Israel, of course, but including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and, well, every nation where rational people dominate public discourse. How close the Iran regime really is to building a nuclear weapon is contested. Those of us with long memories can remember Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talking about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb as far back as 1996. More than 20 years ago, Netanyahu was again saying that Iran was very close to building a bomb that could reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. All this time, Iran has kept insisting its nuclear program is only for peaceful, civilian purposes. On the other hand, nuclear watchdogs also have consistently raised concerns about the growth of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and Khamenei's regime has not exactly been a model of cooperation. Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said, 'is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 percent.' That does not constitute evidence of a plan to build a bomb in and of itself, but the higher the level of enrichment, the closer the uranium gets to 90% weapons grade, and Iran's enrichment level is widely viewed by experts as a significant step closer to weapons grade. For the average American, the truth is not easy to discern even from our own officials. Take U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's testimony to Congress this past March. On the one hand, she said the view of the intelligence community was that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.' On the other, she also said Iran was suddenly talking a lot more about nuclear weapons. That might sound vague, but it's actually highly significant, given the regime's hatred of Israel and the battles with the Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. It's likely that the intra-Iranian discourse has shifted in the light of Israeli aggression. As one of the attendees at the American Nuclear Society's conference in Chicago this past week told us, there likely are those within the Iranian program who are more than interested in building a nuclear bomb to protect the regime, even if the majority are scientists interested only in peaceful, civilian uses and either ambivalent or silently hostile toward Khamenei. The question that does not get enough attention is the balance of power. 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This is not a regime worth defending, and recent progressive attempts to link the situation in Iran with the war in Iraq, ostensibly fought over weapons of mass destruction that did not prove to exist at scale, are illogical. This time around, the question in Iran is more about intent, not the existence or otherwise of weapons. And people's intent can change as circumstances change. What is worth debating is whether the Israeli attacks will make the end of the Khamenei regime more likely. You could argue the events of the last several days are weakening Khamenei. You could also argue that spring does not arrive when the sky is full of bombs and people are fleeing Tehran as fast as humanly possible. So where should you stand? Not with the MAGA isolationists, certainly, who claim that none of this has anything to do with this country, a view widely assumed to be cleaving the MAGA movement in two, which is no bad thing in our view. 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