Letter to the editor: Valentine's Day was the global call to action for the Iranian people
We weren't at Chichester Cross this weekend because something bigger was happening in Munich.
On Saturday 14th February, we joined over one million Iranians and their supporters worldwide in a historic global call to action. In Munich alone, police announced that 250,000 people had gathered to demand the fall of the regime. Standing amongst so many people, all asking for the same thing, was powerful, hopeful, and energising, unlike anything I have ever felt before.
That energy reaches Iranians still fighting inside the country. Videos sent to Iran International showed residents across Iranian cities chanting "Death to the dictator" and other anti-government slogans from rooftops and windows. In some neighbourhoods, chants referenced opposition leader Reza Pahlavi directly, asking him to return.
Munich hosted the largest Iranian opposition protest in European history, timed deliberately to coincide with the Munich Security Conference. For the first time, world leaders, including the President of the European Parliament, and the leaders of Canada, Germany, Italy, and Ukraine's President Zelensky publicly backed the Iranian opposition and called for action.
This matters to Chichester and to Britain. The Iranian regime's terrorism is not a distant concern; it reaches our streets. Since 2022, Britain has disrupted over 20 Iran-backed assassination and kidnapping plots on British soil, leading the UK government to classify the Iranian regime as a core security priority. But disruption alone is not enough. The UK must proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation to restrict its financial, operational, and legal capacity to cause harm.
The world is finally starting to recognise what Iranians have long known: this regime is a threat to global security and the Iranian people's fight for freedom is a fight that benefits us all.
Shiva Knight
North Mead, Chichester