Comedian Omid Djalili has urged the British public to "speak up" in support of the protests in Iran, which he compared to the days leading up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Thousands are believed to have been killed in a brutal regime crackdown on more than two weeks of protests throughout Iran. Official Iranian figures put the death toll at 2,000 on Tuesday but campaigners say thousands more are dead.
"It’s time for us to speak up. The world needs to act. We are on the precipice of something seismic," Djalili said on social media.
Djalili, a long-standing critic of the regime, has become one of the UK's most prominent voices on the protests since they began on December 28. He was joined by Iranian-born British comedian Shaparak Khorsandi, and former Love Island star Anna Vakili who took to social media in support of the demonstrators.
An internet shutdown has meant that the true extent of the protests and the death toll is unknown. But prominent British Iranians like Djalili have spoken about the videos and messages they are receiving from inside the country.
He said the majority of victims had been women and teenagers. "I’ve seen the videos and they are too horrific to share. Yet STILL they are out on the streets in massive numbers," he wrote on X.
"This situation is unprecedented. The most remarkable story of revolution I’ve ever seen. Berlin Wall 1989 comes close – and I was there – but this is different. Very different.
"The people on the streets are ordinary civilians, some of them sick, some even in wheelchairs. But the majority are young and they are fighting with all they have. If they’re to have any kind of life ahead of them, they know there’s no way back from this."
Speaking on the BBC, he also spoke of the growing popularity for the last shah of Iran and his grandson Reza Pahlavi, who is in exile in the US.
"I’ve seen them all, they are chanting for one person: Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah," Djalili said. "He seems to be someone who says 'I don’t want power, it seems to be my responsibility to go back and facilitate transition.'"
The shah's rule and his family legacy are a divisive issue among Iranians, particularly after Mr Pahlavi's perceived support of Israel's military campaign against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies last year.
But Djalili said Mr Pahlavi had become a unifying figure in this revolution, with social media support for him emanating largely from Iran itself. "Whatever you think of him he is a unifying figure. He represents national unity – that’s why they’re calling for his name," he said.
Djalili urged the international community to isolate the Iranian regime in support of the protesters. He said the UK should proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. “Shut the embassies, freeze the assets and put the IRGC on the terrorist list,” he said. "If you do that, the regime is isolated."
But he disagreed that military intervention was needed, after US President Donald Trump threatened to strike Tehran and impose 25 per cent tariffs on countries that continued to trade with Iran.
“If Trump wants to do something that will help us, we're not going to say no but there's always been a peaceful way to do it,” he said. “We don't want to see war. We don't want to see more people killed. With all these revolutions, there is always some kind of outside help."
The regime is extorting the families of protesters and trying to shift blame for their deaths, he said. “A friend of mine lost a brother and made it very clear that when you go and pick up the body, you’re charged a billion tomans,” he said, which is approximately $8,000.
“You have to sign a piece of paper that [says] the body of the loved one who has been killed was actually a member of the security forces killed by one of the protesters."
Djalili said Iranian shop owners who went on strike had their premises firebombed by the regime, who then blamed the protesters. “There’s a huge propaganda push right now,” he added.
Khorsandi, meanwhile, urged her online followers to support the protesters in Iran, describing them as her family. “It is very difficult to do a post without crying,” she said on social media.
She has spoken in the past of her family's persecution under the Iranian regime, which forced them into exile in Britain.
“There’s a revolution going on right now,” she said. "Ordinary Iranian people are being unbelievably brave and protesting in the street demanding the end of a brutal Islamic regime."
She said Iranians in the diaspora were feeling helpless, as people in Iran risk their lives to protest against the regime. “They stole Iran from us decades ago. In 1979 they stole our country,” she said, referring to the country's Islamic revolution.
Vakili also took to social media to drum up support for the protests from her one million followers, making reference to the length of time the current regime has been in place.
"To my non-Iranian friends, what you're seeing in this video is not a protest, it's a revolution," she said. "This is 47 years of silence, 47 years of fear and simply speaking. This is not politics, this is basic human rights.
"People in Iran from the youngest to the oldest ... every city has stood up, people are in the streets risking their lives while live bullets are fired at them. When the internet goes dark, the revolution does not stop. People are still standing and still demanding the right to live free."
