by Potkin Azarmehr, ME Forum
Report Documents Governments’ Failure to Confront Mullahs’ ‘Soft Power’
For years, Britain has prided itself on being an open society. Yet openness without vigilance can become a vulnerability — a weakness that hostile states are increasingly learning to exploit.
A new report by U.K. Peer John Woodcock—Lord Walney— describes in detail how the Iranian regime has done precisely that. The report was launched at a discussion at a March 11 panel in London chaired by the British journalist Nicole Lampert.
The panel also included British-Iranian analyst, Kasra Aarabi, thedirector of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), who contributed to the report.
Titled, “Undue Influence: The Iranian regime’s abuse of the UK Charity System and the Limitations of Oversight,” the 100-page study examines several U.K.-registered charities that maintain links — structural, ideological, or institutional — with state institutions in Tehran. Its conclusion is stark: successive British governments and the Charity Commission for England and Wales have failed to confront Iran’s soft-power infrastructure in the U.K.
This is not merely a question of charity governance. It is a question of national security.