How the far-Left teamed up with Islamists to bring about Iranian revolution... only to be crushed by extremists - and now experts warn the West is walking down the same path

By IMOGEN GARFINKEL - SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER Published: 11:00, 5 July 2026 | Updated: 11:03, 5 July 2026 Nearly five decades ago, Iran’s far-Left intelligentsia built an alliance with Islamists to overthrow the country’s pro-West leader. The revolutionaries envisaged a fairer society that would aim to restore Iran to its authentic roots, moving away from Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s capitalist and modernising agenda. But their socialist dream turned into a nightmare when, after helping to overthrow the Shah and rallying behind Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shia cleric quickly turned on them and built the theocratic dictatorship still in power today. The subsequent reign of terror installed by traditionalist mullahs and the Ayatollah - the then-darling of left-wing intellectuals across Europe - quickly proved that a profound misjudgment had been made. It is a lesson that some experts fear has not been learned by many leftist groups today. In America and Britain, colleges and universities are filled with anti-Israel activists calling to 'Globalise the Intifada', as Jewish groups sound the alarm about rising antisemitism across the globe. And in the UK, the Green Party has adopted a whole new political agenda that sidelines its environmental programme, choosing instead to focus on appealing to new allies - including Muslim communities and pro-Palestine protesters. Indeed, some of their former local election candidates have gone further still, with one having posted an image of an armed man wearing a headband of the Hamas terrorist group, along with the slogan: ‘Resistance is freedom.' Like the far-Left groups of 1970s Iran, the Greens have found themselves propelled from political obscurity to potential kingmakers. But now, experts have warned that fundamental pillars of Britain's liberal society may be at stake if an ultra-conservative form of political Islam is allowed to shape the country’s politics. Hundreds of activists gather in support of four of the Filton defendants on June 12 A protester is arrested after holding a sign saying saying 'Saving Lives is not Terrorism I support Palestine Action' during the demonstration at Woolwich Crown Court on June 12 Dr Shahrar Ali, who identifies as a Muslim, was deputy leader of the Green Party between 2014 and 2016 but has said he no longer recognises the organisation following a growth in its membership since Zack Polanski became leader last September. He told the Daily Mail: ‘Generally I believe that dogmatic ideology should be kept out of politics. ‘The reason for that - Islamism aside - is that I believe in liberal democracy, and the canon of beliefs that have developed in Western democratic societies are inherently secular.’ While Islam as a faith has a diverse array of followers who practise their beliefs differently, certain conservative and extremist strands of the religion present ‘challenges to liberal freedoms,’ he argues. One example Dr Ali gives is the role of mass prayer in civic spaces like Trafalgar Square, such as during Ramadan and Eid - a ritual which he says ‘encroaches on the public sphere’. ‘Although I do respect people’s desire to want to do that, I think it can become oppressive, and it can certainly become obstructive.' ‘If you look at the way Islam is practised across the world, there are plenty of places where that is not tolerated,’ he says. ‘There are plenty of Muslim-majority countries in Central Asia, for example, in the former Soviet Union, where they wouldn’t allow that. They also wouldn’t tolerate the niqab.’ But in Britain, questioning the role of mass prayer in the public sphere is ‘generally regarded as off-limits for most leftist ideologists’. ‘They elevate the importance of religious practice above the negative impact on others who don’t practise that faith,’ he says. ‘They completely subjugate the wishes, preferences and feelings of others who are impacted. I think that is fundamentally inegalitarian - if you genuinely believe in freedom, then you should give a damn that others who don’t practise that religion are being negatively impacted.’ The Greens pulled off a landmark victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, with Hannah Spencer elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority. Part of her success was delivered due to a significant shift of Muslim voters from Labour to the Greens. Following the result, Labour and Reform accused the Greens of relying on sectarian politics, highlighting the party’s use of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and accusations of voter manipulation. Dr Ali said Spencer’s success was partly due to the fact that the party was ‘milking’ its ‘Islamist credentials’ at the ballot box - a tactic he sees as ‘deeply cynical’. That’s because such a victory, he argues, relied upon a ‘suppression of the true Green Party politics that set us apart from others’, such as its LGBTQ+ inclusive policies, and the decriminalisation of sex work. Dr Ali was stripped of his Green Party membership in September 2024 as a result of complaints against him over his gender-critical beliefs. In February 2024, a judge found that the Greens had unlawfully discriminated against him when removing him as a spokesman in 2022 over his views, calling his suspension ‘procedurally unfair’. He was awarded £9,100 in damages, and the party was ordered to pay £90,000 to cover his legal fees. Last September, he launched a fresh legal claim against the Greens over their decision to expel him, which he also claimed breached his rights under the Equality Act. Despite the fact that he strongly disagrees with the Greens’ longstanding campaign to decriminalise sex work, he believes the sidelining of its policies to appeal to Muslim communities is wrong. ‘Because of an alignment some Muslims have to conservative-leaning social attitudes, they wouldn’t like those policies, and it’s a fundamentally dishonest way of campaigning to artificially ignore or suppress a whole gamut of policies that are important to you.’ He continued: ‘It’s artificially raising and attenuating the profile of an Islamist outlook, purely for votes. ‘I think it’s questionable whether most Green Party members, activists or politicians actively agree with that Islamist outlook, and I would suggest the majority don’t, or it wouldn’t survive critical reflection - the kind of reflection that is increasingly avoided in the Green Party.’ He also sees the growth of political Islam in Britain as imperilling the sex education curriculum in schools, and potentially increasing homophobia. ‘Most sensible folk do see a role for age-appropriateness in how sex education and relationship education is taught in schools,’ he says. ‘What will happen increasingly - either in faith schools or in Muslim-majority conurbations - is you will get a refusal to teach core aspects of sex and relationship education, and that sets up a bifurcation in society in which core ideas about citizenship are not shared.' ‘Homophobia in particular is going to be institutionalised in these schools and communities,’ he warned. Hundreds of demonstrators march through central London to mark Al Quds Day, March 23, 2025 An Iranian woman walks past a banner bearing portraits of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (L), slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (C) and current supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei in Tehran on May 28 The galvanising moment for Iranian nationalism arrived in 1953, when Britain and the CIA backed a clandestine operation to topple the country’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Much to the dismay of the British, Mossadegh had nationalised the Iranian oil industry that had been controlled by the lucrative Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), now known as BP. In his place, Washington engineered the reinstallment of Pahlavi, an anti-communist and Western sympathiser. From 1964, as an anti-Shah exile in Turkey, Iraq and later France, Khomeini began recording a series of revolutionary cassette tapes that were publicised in Western media and distributed across Iran’s bazaars and mosques. He constructed himself as a visionary new leader, the new Gandhi, who would transform his country into an Islamic Republic finally free from foreign intervention, winning the support of Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault. ‘We will give women every kind of freedom, but we will prevent moral corruption and, where this is concerned, there is no difference between men and women,’ he insisted on January 23, 1979, a few weeks before returning to Iran. ‘Women are free in the Islamic Republic - in the selection of their activities, in their future, and their clothing,’ he also promised in an interview the year before. Khomeini even said he wouldn't accept a position of power, convincing Iranians he would only act as the country’s spiritual guide amid its rebirth. ‘That was the first mistake, to believe him,’ says political philosopher Stéphanie Roza, author of Enlightenment And Counter-Enlightenment In Iran: A Century Of Political Struggles. Within months of returning to Tehran, the gradual erosion of human rights proliferated across the country. The compulsory hijab was imposed, with violations punishable by up to 74 lashes, arrest, and exclusion from jobs and education. Women lost divorce and custody rights, female singers were banned, and female judges, including Shirin Ebadi, who later went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, were fired. Paramilitary groups stormed the streets, and courts were established under Sharia law. Homosexuality was banned, punishable by public flogging, while death by stoning was introduced, as was amputation of fingers in cases of theft. Meanwhile, Khomeini sought to obliterate anyone deemed an opponent to his system of velayat-e faqih, the concept of clerical guardianship that sees the Supreme Leader preside over the whole system of government. ‘Very quickly, Khomeini began persecuting left-wing militants in the streets, in the popular assemblies, in the cities, in Tehran. They began to understand that they had made a big mistake. But it was too late,’ says Roza. ‘Their mistake was that they didn't want to see, or didn't see, what Islamism really meant,’ she adds, on the question of why so many leftist groups rallied behind Khomeini to topple the Shah. ‘Before Khomeini's victory, Iran never had a serious criticism of religion - from the Iranian intellectuals or from the Iranian left. Even the Communist Party in Iran never proposed a radical criticism of religion,’ she adds. That’s because the country’s Islamic heritage became a form of nationalism, as a rebuttal against foreign interference and the idea of ‘Westoxification’, epitomised by the Shah’s modernising White Revolution of 1963.  But when the revolution was just weeks old, the feeling of betrayal set in. ‘In the dawn of freedom, there is no freedom,’ women roared during a week of protests in March 1979, beginning on International Women’s Day, attracting global solidarity from the likes of Kate Millett, who famously travelled to join them, and Simone de Beauvoir. By the end of 1982, the new regime had executed more than ten thousand people. Victims ranged from Shah loyalists to the leftists who had been decisive in bringing about the Islamic Republic - including the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), and Marxist-Leninist groups such as the Tudeh party and the Fedayeen. Violence reached a hitherto unforeseen peak in July 1988 when Khomeini issued a fatwa, ordering the execution of imprisoned opponents, leading to the killings of 30,000 people - the largest massacre of political prisoners since World War II. An Iranian shows a victory sign as he drives past a billboard of the late Iranian supreme leaders Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on a street in Tehran, Iran, June 15 Fiyaz Mughal OBE, the founder of Faith Matters and the co-founder of Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks), distinguishes between the 1,400-year-old religion of Islam, and the political Islam of the contemporary moment, which he calls ‘destructive and poisonous’. ‘Like any other faith, Islam's history has had times where people have converted peacefully, and there are times where people have been converted by force. It has had times when it was open to other cultures, other thoughts and challenges. ‘It can be open, it can be reflexive, and it can be changed… But what we have had over the last 200 years is a hardening of Islamic interpretations because of the tussle of who is the speaking country for Islam. ‘For the last 200 years, Saudi Arabia took on the mantle that it would be the representative voice for Islam, and its interpretation of Islam was brutal.’ According to Mughal, the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the founding of the Islamic Republic also initiated a ‘warping of the religion towards ultra-conservative brittleness’. He came to Britain aged nine from Uganda, and describes encountering rampant racism. He remembers growing up in the 1980s and being unable to enter the majority of pubs for 'fear of being beaten up'. When he set up Tell MAMA, a national project that records anti-Muslim incidents in the UK in 2012, he enlisted a variety of patrons from the Muslim, Jewish and LGBTQ+ communities. One of the people he took on board was Peter Tatchell, an Australian-born British human rights and LGBTQ+ campaigner. ‘I had leaflets printed about me given to mosques in the Midlands, east London, Leicester, Bradford, Dewsbury, basically saying that I was a secret, closeted homosexual, and that I should not be allowed in their mosques,' Mughal says. ‘Thousands of leaflets, with my picture on it. In other words, in Britain, I was being treated like a leper for trying to respect the lifestyle and the identities of others. Even though they wanted Muslims to be defended, they didn't want other people to be defended.’ According to Mughal, state institutions in the UK, in an effort to be more inclusive, have accepted a form of ultra-conservative, politicised Islam - one they have mistaken for normative Islam. ‘For them, normative Islam means women covering up. For them, normative Islam means assertion in the space of somebody's religious beliefs. Normative Islam in British institutions means: “Let's not talk about religion because it might offend.” It means: “Let's not talk about Islam, because we might be blaspheming”.’ He said this kind of politicised Islam - so different to the faith in which he was raised - was brought into the UK by Muslim Brotherhood activists who fled the Middle East in the 1980s, and were granted asylum into Britain. ‘I remember this clearly. Them becoming much more proactive in mosques around the Palestinian issue, pushing issues around the Middle East, pushing issues about Islam being much more restrictive,  that the West is our enemy, that Muslims are a victim in the West. ‘These were their narratives, and it has stuck,' he says. For Mughal, the growth of political Islam has been propelled by 'useful idiots' on the left, who he accuses of wielding the term 'Islamophobia' to silence legitimate critiques of the ideology. 'This is why we have this problem in our country. Because a lot of useful idiots think out of kindness, morality and decency that we must accept, we must include, and that this is their religion. 'They don't know what they're bringing in,' he says. The Green Party put out a campaign video in Urdu which featured images of Sir Keir shaking hands with Indian PM Narendra Modi as part of its campaign in Gorton and Denton  Both Dr Ali and Mughal argue that the alliance between the left and Islamism in Britain has led to a growth in anti-Jewish attitudes. Indeed, in the run-up to May’s local elections, multiple Green Party candidates were suspended for allegedly making antisemitic comments on social media posts. Two Green candidates for Lambeth council in south London, Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, were arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred online. They have since been bailed pending further enquiries. Screenshots of Ali’s Instagram account indicated she had posted an image of an armed man wearing a headband of the banned Islamist group Hamas, along with the slogan: ‘Resistance is freedom.’ Another screenshot indicated that Mairey had shared a post which included the text: ‘Ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism. It’s revenge.’ The Greens said Mairey was suspended from the party, while Ali left the organisation after she was suspended pending investigation. Following Hamas’ attack and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, Dr Ali says some figures in the Green Party have aligned themselves ‘unquestioningly with a more dangerous strand of political Islam’. ‘By refusing to question the unconscionable role of Hamas on October 7, 2023, by refusing to call out and condemn atrocities perpetrated by Islamist terrorists, because it doesn't suit the narrative - which is simply to articulate and vocalise a conflict as if it’s one sided - [...] we have become apologists for terrorist Islamism,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘You can be horrified at the slaughter of Palestinian civilians, and you can be horrified about how the war is waged, but if you say absolutely nothing about some of the key primary drivers and catalysts of October 7, if you say absolutely nothing about the rape and murder and torture of Israeli civilians, because they’re Israeli, and by implication because they’re Jewish, you are siding with antisemitism.’ He says the Green Party is guilty of a ‘complete lack of vocalisation’, both of the horrors of October 7, and the escalation of anti-Jewish hostility in the UK, such as arson attacks on Jewish charity ambulances, synagogue murders and knife attacks. ‘Siding with pro-Palestine protesters who are taking down ribbons erected on the anniversary of October 7, not allowing Jews in this country to openly campaign for the release of hostages - this is absolutely sickening behaviour, and has nothing to do with Green Party politics as far as I’m concerned.’ He says prominent members of the Green Party defended Palestine Action after protesters broke into a UK site of the Israel-based defence firm Elbit Systems and shattered a police officer’s spine with a sledgehammer in August 2024. ‘The kind of advocacy and apologism they have indulged in, through silence or through openly defending these practices - that is a threat to civilisation, to the way in which we run society,' he says. Hundreds of activists gather in support of four of the Filton defendants on June 12 ‘At the very beginning, nobody knew what the “Islamic Republic” meant,’ says Roza about revolutionary Iran. On March 30, 1979, Khomeini led a referendum with a single question: 'Do you want an Islamic Republic?' It was won, with 98 per cent of people saying: 'Yes.' 'But nobody knew what it really meant - and realised what it meant too late.' While Iranian leftists were eventually forced to see the error of their ways - and paid for their choice with their lives - commentators are increasingly worried that modern day social activists haven’t internalised the lessons of the revolution. ‘The Western left has had, and continues to have, a complicated and often misinformed understanding of what the Islamic Republic of Iran stands for,’ says Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a Senior Research Fellow of Middle East, North Africa and Turkey security at the Royal United Services Institute. ‘We have seen this play out in the recent tug of war of narratives - such as “Iran is winning! Trump has lost!” ‘These misinformed framings are drawn from the Islamic revolutionary actors paying lip service to ideas around social justice, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism during the Cold War era. ‘The legacy of these ideas has held for many in the Western left, and intermingled with pro-Palestine sentiment as well, making it a very complex and often problematic fascination that veers towards almost condoning the Iranian regime, or seeming like regime apologists - whether that is the intention or not.’ In January this year, before the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Tehran, regime officials massacred approximately 30,000 civilians in a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters, and yet ‘the global left didn't react’, says Roza. 'Very few people made very strong statements, very few people on the left stood up for the Iranian people. You can see that they are very embarrassed because they don't really want to condemn [the Islamic Republic], even today,’ she added. Jonathan Hackett, a former US intelligence operator, told the Daily Mail: ‘You see this on university campuses in the United States. There are a lot of anti-war protesters right now that are leftists, saying, “Stop America's war and Israel's war, stop the genocide in Iran”. 'It's like, well, the genocide in Iran is [committed] by the government of Iran, not by the Israeli-US military operation - but they can't say that because that would be a conceding some kind of support for Israel.’ Families and residents gather at the Kahrizak Coroner's Office confronting rows of body bags as they search for relatives killed during the regime's violent crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this year Protesters pictured wading through tear gas during an anti-government protest in Tehran, January 8 Lord Walney, the government’s former anti-extremism tsar, told the Daily Mail: ‘The rise of sectarianism within politics is deeply concerning. ‘The way that the Green Party has diverted itself from its environmental roots to try and harness an electoral force risks substantially increasing the level of anger and division within the country. ‘The fact that we saw five Independent MPs elected on a sectarian ticket at the last General Election is alarming, but it could just be the beginning of a breakdown, where politics becomes increasingly stratified by race and religion. ‘It is absolutely not in the best interests of the UK.’ The atmosphere of division in Britain is being exploited by hostile states like Russia and the Islamic Republic, according to experts. Dr Ben Gidley, a research associate at the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, told the Daily Mail that the Iranian regime has been infiltrating and influencing leftist and pro-Palestine networks in the UK. 'I think that has opened up some opportunities for antisemitic ideas that have been actively promoted by the regime in Iran to reach the Palestine solidarity movement,' he says, citing the growth of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories including the 'Khazar trope' and notion of 'Pax Judaica' - the idea that Jews control the world. And according to a Financial Times investigation, NoName, a pro-Kremlin hacktivist group, and other Russian patriotic cyber groups have sought to recruit proxies online to further the Kremlin’s geopolitical interests, sowing disorder across Europe by amplifying anti-migrant messages. The investigation found that the same handler who orchestrated the arson attacks on Keir Starmer's family home also recruited people in the UK to paint anti-Islamic graffiti at mosques and other sites across the capital. Dr Ali still has faith the Green Party can be 'saved,' but only time will tell whether the sectarianism he fears has taken hold in British politics can be rooted out, or if it is here to stay.  A spokesperson from Lambeth Green Party told the Daily Mail: 'Lambeth Greens are focused on changing Lambeth Council after years of neglect and have already halted the closure of an incredible dementia care facility, challenged affordable housing cuts, brought in a more democratic governance system and are working with local people to Buy Back Brixton.' The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.