The UK’s charity regulator is investigating videos of antisemitic speeches given by former Iranian generals to British students, as well as footage of "death to Israel" chants at the British premises of an Islamic charity.

UK officials probe Iran generals' antisemitic talks to students https://t.co/8GJvEReZt2

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 22, 2024

Two of the videos being investigated by the UK’s Charity Commission show talks by members of the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with one of them describing an apocalyptic war with Jews and Holocaust denial.

The videos, which the BBC saw and verified, were recorded in 2020 and 2021 and show three events. Two were live-streamed speeches by former and active commanders of the IRGC, while the other was an in-person event inside the Kanoon Towhid Islamic Center in western London, commemorating Iran’s top military commander, General Qasem Soleimani. 

Soleimani was killed in a US air strike in 2020. Chants of "death to Israel" were heard during the in-person event, but it wasn’t clear or known who was saying them. There is also other evidence of an IRGC commander giving online talks to British students, where the commander bragged about his role in training Hamas fighters before the October 7 attacks in Israel that claimed the lives of over 1,200 Israelis.

This is former IRGC commander Gen Saeed Ghasemi - he falsely claims the holocaust never happened and urges students to join an apocalyptic war. pic.twitter.com/oT5jMZZ6Bb

— Ed Thomas (@EdThomasNews) January 23, 2024

The Islamic Students Associations of Britain (ISA) and its affiliates promoted the online talks in advance, and these events took place in Kanoon Towhid Islamic Center, which was used as a meeting place. Unlike mainstream Muslim student groups in the UK, the ISA was founded to promote the philosophy and ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader and the founder of the Islamic Republic.

Kanoon Towhid is also owned by the Al-Tawheed (TUCF) Charitable Trust, which has already been investigated by the Charity Commission after reports of the event honoring Soleimani, whom the British government sanctioned for his links to terrorism. The commission is investigating the videos seen and verified by the BBC, including one footage of this event.

Orlando Fraser, chairman of the Charity Commission, has previously warned that charities must not "become forums for hate speech" or extremism. The commission has the authority to investigate, sanction, or even close down charities that violate regulations.

This is ridicuously shocking. How does this go under the radar?

— Melanie Amini (@TheMelAmini) January 23, 2024

Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton who also serves as chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in Parliament, described the speeches as a “brazen act of radicalization," adding that the IRGC should be added to the government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups in the UK, which would make it illegal to be an IRGC member or show support for the IRGC.

In one Instagram Live recording from Iran, which was live-streamed in September 2020 and has been viewed about 1,500 times, IRGC commander Hossein Yekta said universities have become "the battlefront" and urged students to become "soft-war officers.” 

The other video of an online talk from January 2021 glorified the death of Soleimani. Seen by thousands of people, the video shows former IRGC commander Gen Saeed Ghasemi comparing Soleimani’s death to the movie Terminator 2, saying that after Soleimani was killed, the broken pieces would come back together, stronger than ever before. 

I thought “absolute free speech” in universities was paramount, and that students had to learn to be resilient when faced with “opposing views” or am I misremembering the last ten years or so?

— Robin Chud (@MisterDanielBro) January 23, 2024

Ghasemi also falsely claimed that the Holocaust was "a lie and a fake" and talked about an apocalyptic war that British students could join to "bring an end to the life of the oppressors and occupiers, Zionists and Jews across the world."

"God willing, myself and you good students in Europe will be written in the beautiful list of the soldiers of the resistance from tonight." Ghasemi also added.

Lastly, the Instagram Live from 2020 was hosted by Mohammad Hussain Ataee, a British citizen in Yorkshire who was previously the secretary of the Islamic Students Associations of Britain. Although he is no longer the organization's secretary, he still serves as the secretary of the Union of Islamic Students Associations of Europe, an umbrella body that includes the British organization. Although Ataee, who was granted an audience with Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei last year, said the allegations against him were false, he did not answer further questions from the BBC.