Councillor gets death threats over Iran stance

A Coventry councillor from Iran says she and her husband have received death threats after backing the US-led action against the regime in her country.

Mattie Heaven, a Conservative councillor on Coventry City Council, moved to Britain when she was 11 and is married to Iranian journalist and activist Vahid Beheshti.

She says they have both been issued with fatwas by Iranian clerics, after they also urged the UK government to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) for its terror activities on British soil.

Heaven said she was in almost daily contact with anti-terror police. "They say, 'If you feel the threat, call 999'. And I say by that time, it would be too late," she added.

In a statement to the BBC, the Home Office said it had set out a "robust package of measures to counter the grave threat from the Iranian regime".

A fatwa - a religious edict issued by Islamic clerics, normally on a point of religious law, but sometimes against an individual - was famously issued against author Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, in 1989.

Both Heaven and Beheshti back the military strikes against the Iranian regime, with Heaven saying a change of government in Tehran will make the world a safer place.

"This conflict is not just saving people inside Iran, it's for our safety and freedom and security here in the UK too," she said.

"They say in their manifesto their aim is to make the world an Islamic state, so for years they've been funding terrorist proxies around the Middle East to destabilise the region by funding Hamas, Hezbollah and (the) Houthis."

The couple accused the IRGC of being responsible for terrorist activity and the British government of not doing enough to ban the organisation from the UK three years ago.

It led to Beheshti going on hunger strike outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in a bid to persuade the UK government to proscribe the IRGC.

This has so far not taken place, but in its statement, the Home Office said it had sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety.

"[This includes] more than 550 individuals and entities and confirming that the whole Iranian State, has been placed on the enhanced tier of the new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which will increase transparency of Iranian influence activity in the UK," it added.

However, because the IRGC has not been proscribed, Heaven says it makes it hard for UK police to do anything about the death threats.

"The reality is they can do little because their hands are tied. Vahid is in front of the Foreign Office and he is safer there because of the cameras there," she said.

"This is not a joke. The police are aware. the counter-terrorism police have met me several times they sympathise but in terms of action, we see zero action."

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