“In Europe, women are running countries. Women in Iran deserve that. They have always been a leading part of the resistance,” Diana Nammi, a longtime campaigner against autocracy in Iran, says in London.
Female activists and youth campaigners are at the forefront of the fight to shape a new direction for Iran after decades of repressive rule in the Islamic Republic. In the UK, exiled Iranian activists have also mobilised.
Now, as mass protests engulf Iran, hopes are high among British Iranians that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s theocracy is finally about to be toppled.
Laila Jazayeri, the director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, is among the exiles who took to the streets of London at the weekend.
“A pluralistic, a secular, a non-nuclear Iranian republic, it is achievable. The people of Iran are fed up of monarchical and clerical dictatorship,” Jazayeri said at a protest in Downing Street, as women’s voices shouted for democracy and freedom behind her.
Opposition campaigners say the unrest has spread to 192 Iranian cities. Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed and thousands detained as the authorities try to cling to power.
Jazayeri hopes the dissident politician Maryam Rajavi will become modern Iran’s first female leader.
“This time it’s different because (the uprising) is well-organised,” she said. “And we have a leadership, an alternative ready to take over. A woman is leading this resistance, Maryam Rajavi. She has a progressive 10-point plan for a free, democratic Iran.”
Amid the hope there is trepidation, Nammi, a writer and CEO of the UK’s women’s rights organisation IKWRO, last spoke to Kurdish relatives in Iranian territory three days ago. Communication has since been cut off by an internet shutdown.
“I am, of course, worried about everyone in Iran and in Kurdistan because they are living under a very, very dangerous regime that can harm everyone at any time,” Nammi said.
“I am a socialist and I am hoping that it will be a socialist revolution in Iran. But if a different dictator comes to power, then it may not be a safe place again for us,” she added.
For nearly 30 years, Nammi has lived in the UK, but never felt entirely safe from the Islamic Republic’s agents.
“I’ve received telephone calls, threats and things like that,” she said. As a teenager in Iranian Kurdistan, Nammi organised protests against the autocratic, monarchist rule of the western-friendly “dictator” Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – “a regime for rich people” – before joining Kurdistan’s “freedom fighters”, the peshmerga, and campaigning against the theocracy brought to power by 1979’s Iranian revolution.
She now worries at the prospect of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed shah, taking power. “Of course, Pahlavi may have some people who want him, but it is maybe something western countries want … and what’s important for me is what people inside Iran want,” she said.
Nonetheless, she believes “beautiful” Iran has a historic opportunity. “This time millions of people come to the street – and from Tehran especially, which is very important, with workers from other parts of the country. I hope this will not just be regime change, but the revolution to topple the system.
“For nearly 48 years they’ve been killing people, oppressing people, oppressing women, gender apartheid. Now, we need a council to rule the country – to be voted, represented by people themselves.”
Jazayeri’s husband, the opposition activist Hassan Jazayeri, lost his life to the regime in 1988, when her son was three years old. She is calling on the UK government to proscribe Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and for “international recognition of the rights of Iranian people to self-defence” against them.
Meanwhile, the Tehran-born actor Nazanin Boniadi is calling for international support. The Iron Man star told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “The last thing we need is for people to be emboldened to go into the streets because they think they’re going to get that support and then that support doesn’t come.”
Jazayeri says a “firm stance” from the US president, Donald Trump, who has threatened to intervene in Iran, has boosted morale. “We want the west to stand firm behind Iranian people. But that doesn’t mean boots on the ground,” she added.
However, Nammi is “really nervous” that Trump’s comments “gives the excuse to the regime to oppress people”.
She said: “Whenever western countries interfere, the country becomes unstable, war continues and it is more oppression for people. I think it’s better for western countries not to interfere at all and let people in Iran decide for themselves what they want.”
