The unholy alliance between pro-Palestine protesters and the Islamic Republic

The young Westerners who wave flags of the Islamic Republic at pro-Palestine rallies are a distressing sight for Diaspora Iranian Kowsar Eftekhari. 

“The Islamic Republic shot me in the eye!” she shouted at a rally in Berlin earlier this month, displaying the eye lost when she was attacked by the regime’s security forces during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran. 

The response, captured on video here and here, was violent. A young woman wearing a Palestinian sticker on her face tried to grab Eftekhari. Several men surrounded her shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “Khamenei Akbar” (“Khamenei is the greatest”). 

“These are people who are not even Iranian, yet Khamenei is like an idol to them. This is dangerous for the West,” Eftekhari told The Jerusalem Post.

Eftekari’s experience is a dramatic case of a growing tendency for pro-Palestinian activists to align themselves with the regime in Iran.