Euan McColm: Courage of Iranian women stands in stark contrast to Britain's face-masked cosplay revolutionaries

He styles himself a revolutionary, fighting for progress.

Week in, week out, he and his comrades gather in cities across the UK, chanting their support for Palestine and demanding the destruction of Israel.

On occasion, he’ll turn his attention elsewhere and stand outside a feminist conference, screaming abuse at attendees who refuse to buy into the fantasy that trans women are actually women.

Whether devoting himself to making Jews feel unsafe or spending miserable afternoons threatening women who reject the presence of men in changing rooms and rape crisis centres, the contemporary British radical goes equipped with two essentials.

The first is a terrifying certainty. The second is a face-mask.

I’ve never had much time for these cosplayers, these weekend insurgents with their incoherent views and their violent rhetoric but, over recent days, my contempt for them has only deepened.

Since December 28, people across Iran have been on their streets, demanding the end of the Islamic regime that has terrorised them for decades. With international media denied access to the country, citizens have, through shaky live streams on their smartphones, showed the world what real revolutionary courage looks like.

How small the masked undergraduate waving a Hamas flag on a British street looks when compared with those Iranian women who – under threat of the most horrific punishment – have thrown off the hijabs they are compelled to wear.

While British ideologues align themselves, from the safety of the West, with the Islamists of Hamas and Hezbollah, people across Iran are saying “no more” to the theocrats who, for years, have supported those terror groups.

And they are doing it with humbling bravery.

Watching shaky footage of a group of young women – their heads uncovered, their voices loud and clear – marching in protest while the sound of gunfire echoed around them, I found myself profoundly moved by their courage. Would I, I wondered, step up as they were now doing?

The most honest answer I could give myself was that I hoped so.

It has been depressing, if unsurprising, that those on the British left who scream so loudly about Palestine have had little to say about what’s happening in Iran. There have been no rallies of Keffiyah-clad protestors demanding support for the oppressed people of Iran.

But, then, how could they credibly have done so when Iran, under the leadership of Ali Khamenei, has been funding Islamist terror groups that share their unwavering hatred for Jews?

Last October, just five minutes from my front door, a group of students at Glasgow University filmed themselves celebrating the second anniversary of the massacre of more than 1,200 people in Israel by Hamas terrorists.

Masked undergraduates gathered in the cloisters of the campus and unfurled a banner declaring “glory to our martyrs”. At the same time, the Glasgow University Justice for Palestine Society posted a message on social media platform Instagram, vowing to “celebrate the Al-Aqsa flood”, the description given by Hamas to the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023.

The group’s statement went on: “We honour the resistance which has led the path for our people’s liberation, and fought tirelessly against the most technologically advanced army, yet remain steadfast and undefeated.”

There have not, so far, been any demonstrations on the university’s campus in support of those fighting for liberty in Iran.

The Islamic Revolution, which began in October 1977 and led, two years later, to the overthrow of the monarchical government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the installation of islamist cleric Ruhollah Khomeini as national leader, transformed life for Iranians who, until that point, had lived in a secular society.

Archive film of life in Iran before the mullahs shows an entirely different country, one where women studied and worked, where they could wear whatever they chose without fear of imprisonment, torture, or even death.

Surely those who demand “freedom” for Palestinians would like to see it for Iranians?

On Friday, Khamenei claimed anti-regime protesters were attempting to “please” US president Donald Trump. In a televised address, he said: “Let everyone know that the Islamic Republic came to power through the blood of several hundred thousand honourable people and it will not back down in the face of those who deny this.”

This will have come as the sweetest music to the ears of those political activists who march through our cities alongside Islamists. How much more convenient for them a story of unwanted American intervention than one of a people rising up against an Iranian government that rules with brutality.

The comedian Omid Djalili, born in London 60 years ago to Iranian emigrant parents, has emerged, over recent days, as a voice of clarity on what is taking place in Iran.

“It is important,” he wrote on Friday, “to make very clear that what’s happening inside Iran right now is an uprising by the people, for the people. It is 46 years in the making. This is not a movement run by Israel or America as the Islamic regime in Iran is desperately trying to spin.”

Iranians have been on the brink of overthrowing the mullahs before only for their efforts to be brutally suppressed. In 2009, following a disputed presidential election, dozens of opposition supporters were killed by the state and thousands more were imprisoned.

More recently, in 2022, demonstrations erupted across Iran following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who had been arrested for failure to properly wear her Hijab. Those protests saw more than 550 Iranians killed and 20,000 detained by security forces.

Since this latest wave of protests began, more than 50 people have been killed for daring to stand up to the regime. But still the people take to the streets, risking their lives for the chance of liberty.

Their courage stands in stark contrast to the thuggery of British radicals who talk of freedom without understanding what it truly means.