Farage Backs Trump Iran Intervention, Hails Persian 'Freedom Fighters'

The West should ban radical Islamist groups and back President Donald Trump’s suggestion of military action to suppose “the good guys” on the ground in Iran, said Brexit leader Nigel Farage on Monday.

Reform UK leader and Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage has stepped up his longstanding support of the Persian people and the return of the country’s former monarchy on Monday, addressing a rally outside the Iranian embassy. Handed the microphone at the protest, Mr Farage declared “freedom for Iran”, hailed the “beautiful Persian people”, and hailed victory, “whatever the terrible price being paid by many innocent people in every Iranian city right now”.

The London embassy was the scene of a remarkable intervention by a pro-monarchy protester at the weekend who, pursued ineffectually by British police officers, managed to scale the façade of the building to the balcony and replace the Islamic theocracy flag of Iran with the old pre-1979 Persian flag. The same embassy balcony was famously the stage for the closing moments of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege, brought to an end by a special forces raid by the SAS.

Mr Farage had gone to the protest from a press conference where he announced the latest defection to his insurgent Reform UK political party, riding high in the polls in the UK and at least in with a shot at winning the next national elections. At that press conference Mr Farage had also spoken out on Iran, and wider issues of Islamic extremism. Calling for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be classified as a terrorist organisation by the British government, Farage said:

We should have proscribed the IRGC years ago, just as we should have proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood. I have been saying these things clearly and consistently for many years, and I have reiterated them in recent times. I cannot believe the stupidity of Obama, the European Union, the British Foreign Office… who went along in 2015 with this JCPOA deal.

It’s been a disaster, it freed up tens of billions of dollars for the Iranians, and what have they used it for? To fund the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas. These are massive self-inflicted wounds, so I have always felt vehemently opposed to this. We went for regime change against Saddam, against Gadhafi, the regime change we’ve always needed is in Iran where the wonderful Persian people with all their amazing talents have been kept in this theocratic brutal regime. I very much hope President Trump acts in the next few days.

Mr Farage clarified that he “100 per cent” supported “military action against the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, on the ground in Iran so the good guys can win this revolution.

These remarks followed others at the weekend when Farage addressed a Reform UK rally where he again decried the Obama White House for giving a life extension “to this appalling regime” with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), hailed the “brave men and women” protesting, and said he prays for the Persian people.

Farage’s interest in Iran is not a new-found fancy relating to the present news cycle. He has previously met the pretender to the dormant throne of Iran, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, calling him “quite a good friend”. In 2018, he spoke out against the “nasty repressive regime” in Tehran. He said then about the then-protests in Iran — they have been a frequent, cyclical occurrence for decades, which may cool hopes that the present manifestation could lead to meaningful change — that:

…I couldn’t believe that some of those protesters were actually calling for the return of the Shah! Now unless you’re over 50 you won’t remember this but back in 1979, yup, it had a monarchy. It was in many ways pretty Western. It was certainly, actively involved in trade and had its own great culture. When that revolution happened and the hard-line Islamists took over, I had to say I didn’t know much about Islam in those days… I certainly had never heard of the concept of extreme, radical Islam until 1979 and Iran. And here we are, 38 years on.

Farage’s remarks of recent days follows comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said the United States “stands ready to help” if the Persian people chose freedom. On January 9th, President Trump said: “Iran’s in big trouble… I’ve made the statement very strongly that if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved… That doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts.”