‘You weren’t free’: Iranians party in London and Manchester after strikes against regime

‘You weren’t free’: Iranians party in London and Manchester after strikes against regime The diaspora hope the death of Ali Khamenei will bring change – and peace – even as fears remain over Iran’s future On Saturday night, with bombs falling across the Middle East and rumours of the death of Ali Khamenei , the longtime ayatollah of Iran, spreading, the streets of north London resembled a party. Thousands of revellers filled Finchley Road, a part of London often called Little Tehran because of the large Iranian community, waving flags, many with the lion and sun, the flag of the Iranian state before the 1979 Islamic revolution. By the following morning, the ayatollah’s death had been confirmed, as had the deaths of hundreds of Iranians killed as the bombs continued to fall over the country, with at least 148 of them being children killed in a strike on an elementary school in the south of the country. With the number of deaths rising, the celebratory mood among sections of Britain’s Iranian diaspora was far more muted than it had been the night before. Suri, the 40-year-old manager of a Persian grill up the road in north Finchley, expressed her happiness at the events of the last 48 hours. “We were happy, we support it,” she said. “The community here, they are very happy, they are dancing and singing in the Finchley area. You know, many people they’ve been celebrating, Iranian and Jewish people.” Despite the celebrations, Suri, who is originally from Tehran and has been in the UK for 20 years, admitted that Iran’s future remained “very unclear, to be honest, we don’t know anything yet”. Gholam Khiabany is a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. Originally from Kermanshah in the west of Iran, he moved to the UK in 1990, fleeing the regime as a political refugee. Talking about the US-Israel strikes on Iran, the British-Iranian academic, who now lives in Hammersmith, said: “It was expected, but it’s absolutely devastating.” Khiabany, whose research focus...