Opposition divided: battle among Iranian regime’s opponents plays out on London streets

Wearing a bucket hat, a blue Adidas hoodie and khaki shorts, Tony Mohraz, also known as 021kid, chest-bumps a friend in front of a memorial wall in Golders Green, in north London . Photographs can be seen behind him of those who were killed protesting against the Iranian regime. As a large lion and sun flag used in Iran before the Islamic revolution is waved overhead, Mohraz starts to rap. “Basij, one, two, shoot. IRGC, one, two, shoot. Mojahedin, one, two, shoot,” he drills for the benefit of a camera while imitating firing a weapon. The rap from Mohraz – an advocate for the return to the Iranian throne of the Pahlavi dynasty, specifically Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late shah – is a remix of a hip-hop war anthem popular in Israel, called Harbu Darbu (slang borrowed from Syrian Arabic which, in Hebrew, means to rain hell on an opponent). The Basij he is pretending to shoot is a paramilitary organisation that is known as the “iron fist” of Iran. The IRGC referenced is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s most powerful political and military institution. And then there is the mention of the Mojahedin. The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), more commonly known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), was part of the revolution against the western-backed shah in 1979 but became an exiled armed opposition group fighting the new regime from Iraq. …