Vahid Beheshti

Vahid Beheshti is a former Iranian political prisoner, and former member of the opposition party of Iran who has dedicated the past 18 years of his life towards fighting the Iranian regime. Mr. Beheshti currently resides in London where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hamas supporters have tried to attack him. Mr. Beheshti risked his life twice in the past year to overthrow the regime, camping out in front of the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office. He has engaged in a 72-day hunger strike with the goal of having the IRGC designated as a terrorist organization, for which he has had to be hospitalized. Mr. Beheshti, because he had displayed an Israeli flag during a Palestinian protest in London, was chased by a mob of Hamas supporters, and one knife-wielding Hamas supporter had threatened to behead him, (who has been apprehended by the British police). Mr. Beheshti is the first member of the Iranian opposition to have spoken at the Israeli Knesset, which he has repeatedly spoken about as “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

Mr. Beheshti is convinced that Iran has been at the heart of waging a continuous and systemic war to eliminate the state of Israel since the Islamic Revolution of 1979; that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the prime destabilizing force in the Middle East; that it has hegemonic designs for Europe and the United States; and that domestically the Islamic Republic in a very weak position with “18 million Iranians on the ground who are thirsty for freedom.”