How government used media to claim Iran ‘link’ to Palestine Action
The proscription of Palestine Action took place alongside claims made in sections of the British media that the group could have been funded by Iran.
On the same day, 23 June, that home secretary Yvette Cooper formally announced to parliament she would proscribe the group, the Times published a report saying “Iran could be funding Palestine Action, Home Office officials claimed”.
It added: “Officials are understood to be investigating its source of donations amid concerns that the Iranian regime, via proxies, is funding the group’s activities given that their objectives are aligned”.
The Times provided no quotes from Home Office officials or any evidence of Iranian funding to Palestine Action.
The same day, the paper published another article, stating: “Support for the group [Palestine Action] from campaigns with alleged links to Iran has fuelled concerns it is unwittingly and covertly being funded by Tehran. It received backing yesterday by a group described in a government report as ‘aligned with the Iranian regime’”.
This referred to the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a pro-Iranian UK-based NGO which had posted on X: “We stand in solidarity with our comrades PalestineAction!”
The Times noted that the IHRC was described in a 2023 government review of the Prevent counter-extremism programme as an “Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime, that has a history of ‘extremist links and terrorist sympathies’”.
Across the media
GB News immediately picked up on the claim. One of its hosts, Dawn Neesom, asked guest James Schneider: “Who is funding them? That’s what I want to know. Where is this money coming from?”
She added: “We know there are Iranian sleeper cells actually, not that sleepy operating in this country. There have already been several arrests, including Iranian spies. It makes me very nervous.”
The following day, the Times and the Mail went into overdrive, in articles with remarkably similar headlines.
The Mail thundered: “Does Palestine Action’s cash trail lead all the way to Iran?”. For the Times it was: “Palestine Action’s cash trail may lead all the way to Iranian regime.
The Times repeated: “Iran could be funding Palestine Action, Home Office officials believe, after Yvette Cooper announced it will be proscribed as a terror group by the end of next week”.
The _Mail’_s story picked up on the Times report the previous day. After repeating its central claims, it added: “Beyond concerns around transparency [of Palestine Action’s funding], the Home Office is yet to state direct evidence that links Palestine Action with Iran”. Or, in fact, any evidence.
This didn’t stop the Mail publishing a further article that day also claiming “the Home Office is investigating whether Iran is funding Palestine Action”.
It added: “Officials are understood to be probing the group’s source of donations amid concerns it is not bound by financial transparency rules. There are fears Iran could be providing money, via proxies, given their objectives of ‘dismantling the apartheid regime in Israel’ are aligned.”
The Spectator then also joined in. “Home Office probes Palestine Action over suspected Iran link”, it headlined. Now the “link” was “suspected”.
The report stated: “It transpires that officials are investigating its funding over concerns there may be an Iran link… amid worries that the Iranian regime is funding the campaign group via proxies given their aims align”.
Despite briefing the press, the government kept senior politicians in the dark. The chairman of parliament’s intelligence and security committee revealed a “sense of disappointment that the Home Office did not see fit to give the intelligence assessment behind this.”
He was “quite angry” that “no attempt had been made by the Home Office to do so” before it went to a vote.
‘Fears’
On 25 June, the Mail published another article about the Home Office “investigation” that repeated “fears Iran could be providing money, via proxies, given their objectives of ‘dismantling the apartheid regime in Israel’ are aligned”.
Then the Telegraph and the BBC got in on the act. The Telegraph headlined with: “‘Iran-linked’ group backs Palestine Action”, referring to the IHRC.
A presenter on Radio 5 Live, interviewing members of the public, said: “Okay, let’s have another call, it’s Palestine Action time… This Palestine Action group who attacked RAF planes and who according to the government may be funded by Iran…”.
By 27 June, the Times published an article that, it claimed, “can also reveal the organisation’s [Palestine Action’s] close links to the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), believed by British officials to have direct ties to Iran”.
However, the article did not reveal anything that had not been asserted in the pieces on 23 June. Indeed, it contained a refutation of its very claim, a statement by the IHRC that said: “While we support the aims and objectives of Palestine Action – namely, opposition to the crimes of Israel – we have not provided them with any financial or material support.”
The following day the Mail carried another article about the supposed “fears that Iran may be bankrolling the group’s activities through proxies”, without naming any such proxies. It did add: “But Palestine Action insists it is funded by ‘ordinary people’ and condemned any Iran link as a smear.”
‘Paying for Palestine Action’
The Telegraph entered the fray again on 30 June with an opinion piece by Samuel Ramani entitled “The Iranian threat already inside Britain”.
He wrote: “Despite investigations corroborating the IHRC’s links to the Islamic Republic, the group still operates and is facing scrutiny for allegedly backing the Palestine Action sabotage campaign against Israeli targets”.
The media claims found an echo in parliament.
The day after the Times’ initial report, 24 June, Lord Eric Pickles, a former chair of Conservative Friends of Israel and prominent pro-Israel figure in British politics, congratulated the government for its intention to ban Palestine Action, and claimed to parliament that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were “the people who are paying for Palestine Action”.
Two days later, Conservative MP and shadow business minister Greg Smith asserted in parliament that: “When it comes to the evils of terrorism and aggression across the middle east, all paths lead back to the Iranian regime”.
He then went on to lament why the government hasn’t yet proscribed the IRGC “not least given that he took the right and proper action to proscribe Palestine Action”.
We Believe in Israel
Declassified has not been able to establish where the Home Office allegations came from.
The Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent, Haroon Siddique, noted that the anonymous Home Office briefing about Iran came two days after the pro-Israel lobby group We Believe in Israel (WBII) tweeted: “Behind Palestine Action’s theatre of resistance stands a darker puppeteer: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … Palestine Action is the mask. The IRGC is the face.”
WBII had launched a campaign to ban Palestine Action earlier in June and the Guardian noted that “language from a report it published was similar to that used by Cooper in her statement” announcing the group’s proscription.
Indeed, WBII has taken credit for Yvette Cooper’s proscription of Palestine Action. It tweeted on 24 June: “This outcome is the direct result of months of sustained research, strategic advocacy, and evidence-based reporting led by WBII and our partners”.
It was “our briefing” documenting PA’s activities that was “instrumental in tipping the balance”, it claimed.
WBII added that Palestine Action’s “denial of Iranian funding does nothing to erase its open glorification of Hamas, its alignment with the narratives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or its repeated attempts to disrupt and intimidate British institutions and communities.”
WBII had launched another campaign on 22 June, to “neutralise” Iran’s regime and to “demand the UK proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation”.
WBII made clear that the proscription of Palestine Action was the first step it sought, to be followed by banning the IRGC. It tweeted on 21 June: “If this proscription [of Palestine Action] is to mean anything—if it is to be more than gesture—it must be followed by a greater reckoning. The IRGC must be proscribed in its entirety”.
NGOs
WBII, like several other groups in Britain’s Israel lobby, does not declare its funders on its website, as far as Declassified has been able to establish.
The group grew out of a 2011 conference supported by the Israeli embassy in London which was organised by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), described by the Guardian as “Britain’s most active pro-Israeli lobbying organisation”.
WBII was directed by prominent pro-Israel figure Luke Akehurst for 13 years from 2011-24 before he became a Labour MP. Its present director, Catherine Perez-Shakdam, achieved media attention after she infiltrated the Iranian regime in 2017 when working as a journalist.
The revelation raised unproven allegations she could have been an Israeli intelligence asset, which have been strongly refuted by Perez-Shakdam.
A regular writer for WBII in the Daily Express and a former research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, Shakdam is also executive director of the Forum for Foreign Relations which describes itself as “a specialised consultancy focusing on political and media strategies across the UK, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Indo-Pacific region”.
Shakdam co-founded the Forum, one of whose trustees is Major General John Holmes, a former head of the SAS and director of UK special forces.
Alongside her at the Forum is Itan Reuveni, a former IDF paratrooper who serves as a platoon sergeant in an Israeli reserve paratroopers unit.
Reuveni is also director of communications at NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute based in Jersualem whose advisory board includes a former CIA director.
NGO Monitor was quoted in the Times claim of 23 and 24 June and the _Mail’_s repetition on 24 June saying that Palestine Action’s funding “reflects a lack of transparency and accountability”.
Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation on 5 July after a parliamentary vote three days before. Two court rulings about the ban have made no reference to the group receiving funding from Iran.
The Home Office is likely to submit “closed” evidence at future court hearings, but there is no suggestion of what that material will contain. It will be impossible for the public to ascertain its veracity as it will only be heard in secret court.