Britain should stand with Iran’s protesters, not the regime. That means targeted pressure, democratic solidarity, and practical steps that actually bite.
Here’s what those practical steps should look like:
Proscribe the IRGC
We must treat the Revolutionary Guard as the terrorist apparatus it is. This means proscribing the group and closing loopholes that allow intimidation and fundraising networks to operate in Britain.
Expand targeted sanctions and sanction evasion
Britain must pursue the asset freezes and travel bans of regime officials, security leaders, and enablers of the regime. To ensure these sanctions hit, greater emphasis must be placed on cracking down on attempts to evade them, including but not limited to shipping, insurers, shell companies, and financial networks facilitating revenue flows.
Supporting communication access
The UK government must work to ensure internet resilience across Iran by enabling access to satellite internet via lawful procurement routes, coordinating with international partners, and supporting trusted NGOs involved in distribution. The UK must also look into the use and funding of circumvention services that allow Iranians to continue using the internet, like Psiphon and Tor bridges. We must also look to pay for this infrastructure to keep it resilient against regime tampering and develop a rapid adaptation plan when the regime blocks a route.
Enabling NGOs to get the truth out
By working through NGOs, the UK can establish verification pipelines involving journalists and activists to document regime abuses and provide additional funding to groups that preserve evidence for future accountability efforts.
Circumventing our own sanctions
Any sanctions and controls we impose upon the regime can negatively impact protesters. That’s why we must look to the US and develop our own version of the “General License D-2”, which provides expanded protection of software and services like social media, video conferencing, and cloud-based services used by protesters, despite regime clampdowns and foreign sanctions hitting the country.
Iranian regime =/= Iranians
The actions of the Iranian regime and its leadership have been inhumane, but it is important to note that it will never justify bigotry towards Iranians. According to the 2021/2022 census, roughly 114,000 people born in Iran now live in the UK. They could be your friends, your neighbours, your local shopkeeper, your doctor, your child’s teacher, or just a friendly face you see in the street. We can never allow legitimate distrust and opposition to the regime to bleed into anti-Iranian sentiment. It does nothing but breed more hatred and undermines efforts to build a better world.
This is a human rights crisis and a democratic moment. Our job, for all of us, is to support the protesters, constrain the regime, and stop the Ayatollah from exporting his repression abroad.
* Jack Meredith is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and an active campaigner and canvasser with Swansea and Gower Liberal Democrats. His writing focuses on democratic reform, social justice, trade unionism, economic democracy, and the institutional foundations of effective government. He has written for the Fabians, Lib Dem Voice, Liberator, Nation Cymru, Bylines Cymru, and Centre Think Tank.
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7 Comments
Excellent piece.
I think you have articulated a robust approach of our liberal and also social democratic values for those who are more inclined to include that as part of our party values. This should be our approach.
I always think caution needs to be exercised on military intervention and sudden regime change. We have seen where heavy handed misadventures have done. The power needs to come through to the Iranian people. And we also need to allow the UK or Europe to allow safe haven for an appropriate transitional government body.
The task needs to be to isolate Iran as much as we can and lean on neighbouring countries of Iran who are are our allies to provide support. They will know the region well, provide safe haven for those seeking refuge and be good at targeting Iran.
This was the way of Syria. While still not perfect the consequences from the fall of Assad there, that is a road map of what we got right but what we can learn. Also, mulitlateral support is also needed.
I don’t disagree with anything in this article but I think we need to develop a set of agreed benchmarks that make plain when governments of countries have stepped over a line and are acting in ways that are completely unacceptable. Then, economic sanctions and political and sporting isolation should be the response.
I would encourage you to consider and write an article suggesting what those benchmarks may be. I would suggest invading a neighbour country could be one red line, of which Russia would fall foul (but not Belarus). I would also suggest that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, whether or not it meets the legal definition of genocide, I clearly not acceptable – it should face economic sanctions and political and sporting isolation. But what other redlines and which countries are we talking about? Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan? Myanmar? I could go on – it could be some list…
@joan summers
I would actually suggest you write it, since it’s clear you have a strong idea in mind regarding an outline for this. It would be brilliant to read!
Might it be wiser and kinder for Britain to back the people of Iran rather than “stand with Iran’s protesters” who seem to have been backed by “Western” organisations?
Might it be better to learn from the cruelty and chaos from “backing the protestors” in, for example,Afghanistan?
Prior to the “West” backed regime change in Afghanistan, women had so much greater freedoms than they do now.
For example, women had freedom of dress, employment and access to a full education.
Following the “Protest Preciptated” regime change in Libya, it went from a state with one of the highst standards of living in the whole of Africa to one which suffers civil war and slave markets.
P. S. Over half the university students in Iran are female.
@Steve Trevethan
If you’d like to write a response piece, I’d be more than happy to read your view on the matter in full ☺️
Many thanks indeed to Jack Meredith for his kind and thoughtful offer!
To save time all round, attached is an article, currently on the blog of Craig Murray, which addresses the matter interestingly and which influenced my comment.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/01/resisting-the-respectable-opinion-on-iran/
“History never repeats itself but it often rhymes”. This saying has been attributed to Mark Twain.
It’s certainly doing this Iran right now. 73 years ago Britain and the US orchestrated a coup. They recruited agents to organise demonstrations to help destabilise and remove Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstall Reza Pahlavi after Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry and refused to comply with western demands.
Today Mossad and the CIA are carrying out operations according to the same formula.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of any regimes in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan etc that we may take a dislike to, we need to be aware that destabilising them with the purpose of effecting regime change often stores up more long term problems than are immediately solved.