‘The Iranian people want the right to shape their own future – free from bombs, free from fear, and free from foreign coercion’
Maryam Eslamdoust is known to many London CNDers as the Mayor of Camden who twice opened our Hiroshima commemorations in Tavistock Square Gardens. Nowadays Maryam is General Secretary of TSSA transport union. She took part in a CND webinar during the military attack on Iran in June, speaking in a personal capacity about its impact on the people of Iran and the injustice her country was suffering at the hands of Israel and the United States. We reproduce her speech below, preceded by an update on Iran from London CND Chair Carol Turner.
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The fragile ceasefire that followed the 13-day war on Iran is June is holding, for now at least, and Iran has reopened a dialogue with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But Israel continues to call for regime change, and tensions have risen as President Trump’s end of August deadline for Iran agreeing to his terms for agreeing to curtail its civil nuclear programme came and went.
Trump and Netanyahu continue to insist that Iran is only a hair’s breadth away from having nuclear weapons – without evidence, and against the reports of the IAEA. The UK, France, and Germany (the E3) are seeking to add to the pressure on Iran to accede to Trump by imposing so-called snapback sanctions. Iran has reopened dialogue with the IAEA since the attacks ended.
In his first term of office President Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by President Obama. Trump claimed – against the evidence of successive IAEA inspection reports - that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons programme, and unilaterally re-imposed sanctions. US withdrawal effectively killed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) which was brought into operation when the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 in 1915.
Snapback is the provision in UNSC 2231 that enables sanctions to be re-imposed if Iran fails to comply with the terms of the JCPoA. This takes place 30 days after a signatory to UNSC 2231 requests snapback, unless a decision to the contrary is passed by the UNSC. The E3 made a joint notification to the UNSC on 28 August, listing what they considered indicators of Iran’s non-performance, seeking to ensure sanctions were re-imposed by the point at which the JCPoA came to an end and sanctions terminated.
MARYAM ESLAMDOUST
‘Not just a military strategy, a strategy to paralyse Iran’
Hello everyone and thank you so much for being here today to discuss Israel's attack on Iran. I am the General Secretary of TSSA. but today I'm not here in my official capacity. I'm speaking as a British Iranian woman and a daughter.
I haven't heard from my father who's in Iran for over 48 hours. The last time we spoke, he told me the roads out of Tehran were gridlocked. Millions of people were trying to flee the city. Petrol was gone; he couldn't fill his car to leave the city. Millions were trying to escape Tehran. It was near midnight and I haven't been able to get hold of him since.
That's because Iran's telecommunications infrastructure has been attacked by Israel. People can't make phone calls. They can't connect to the internet. They're being cut off from the world. All the while missiles continue to fall, cars are being blown up in daylight and civilian neighbourhoods are attacked.
I'm hearing now that the Iranian banking system has been hacked. So overnight people's savings have disappeared.
This is not just a military strategy by Israel or Donald Trump. It's a strategy of collapse – to paralyse Iran, its infrastructure, and the morale of its people. And it's not just physical, it's psychological.
Yesterday Iran state TV was hacked live on air. Viewers across the country saw their screens cut to unfamiliar visuals and messages delivered in Farsi encouraging Iranians to rise up to revolt, misusing ‘women, live, freedom’ slogans. The day before that the state TV News building in Tehran, the same network was bombed while a woman presenter was live on air.
This is not just an air strike, it's a message ‘we can get inside your buildings, your screens, your minds. It's an attempt to intimidate and destabilize – not just with force, but with fear.
Israel's illegal attack on Iran is not about self-defence or security. This is about making Iran collapse as a state politically, economically, and socially. We have seen this before in Iraq, Libya, Syria. It's the same script: isolate, destabilise, dehumanise, destroy.
And what is more alarming, it is unfolding on today’s media without any challenge. Twenty years ago, some journalists and some editors still had the courage to question war narratives. Today, far too many are simply repeating the government's briefings and anonymous intelligence sources. This is no critical interrogation of the story. Sadly, the press is not holding power to account, it is echoing it.
There is a propaganda war, an information war. In recent days, I've seen social media flooded with posts in Farsi from IDF accounts using the Iranian language and the language of Iranian protest movements from two years ago, especially the slogan ‘woman, life, freedom’ to call for regime change. Those slogans were never meant to justify bombs. They were meant to highlight the suffering of civilians, Iranian women. Those who shouted them wanted dignity and justice, not war.
What I've seen from Iranians – both inside the country, and the diaspora – is a remarkable unity. This isn't political unity, there are still very real debates about Iran's future, its leadership, its systems. But right now, across the political spectrum amongst, Iranians are united on one fundamental idea: foreign bombs won't liberate us. Iranians don't want their futures dictated by missiles, invasions, or destabilisation campaigns disguised as solidarity.
Let me speak about the issue that's constantly weaponized by the western media, Iran's nuclear programme. We're being told once again that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapons programme, but the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA has been clear there are no credible indications that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That was their official assessment before these escalations even began.
What has Iran done in response? It's reduced, not stopped, voluntary cooperation with the IAEA. That was originally agreed as part of the JCPOA, the nuclear deal that Donald Trump tore up in 2018. For years after that, Iran continue to comply with the deal's core provisions. But eventually Iran said if the deal's dead, then why should we keep making concessions? Even so, Iran remains signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the IAEA still monitors its nuclear sites. There is no legal evidence of weaponisation.
There is one country in the Middle East known to have a nuclear arsenal, and that's Israel. It has hundreds of warheads. It has never joined the NPT. It allows no international inspection and yet it is presented in the west as a responsible actor. That is double standards of the highest order.
The demands being made of Iran right now are surrender to compliance, to regime change. These are unrealistic and dangerous. There is no military solution to this crisis. Iran will not, and cannot, surrender to conditions it knows will only bring more pain.
So what's the path forward? Diplomacy, but real diplomacy. Iran has repeatedly said it's willing to accept limits on its uranium enrichment programme, allow extensive international monitoring, engage in regional security talks. That has to be mutual. It means an end to the
sanctions the US has imposed that are strangling the economy and civilian living standards. and restoring Iran's full participation in global, political, and economic life – ending the policy of permanent isolation.
If the West is serious about peace in the region, it must also hold all states accountable, including its allies, and that means finally addressing Israel's illegal wars, its undeclared nuclear weapons, and its current actions in Gaza which the UN's own experts have said may amount to genocide.
So what do we do now. We keep speaking up. We're not just neutral, if we stay silent we are complicit. I'm asking you - whether you're trade unionists, policy makers, academics, journalists, or just someone who believes in justice, please do three things.
Speak up. Say clearly that bombing Iran into collapse is not a path to peace.
Demand diplomacy. Press your government to stop fuelling war and start pursuing a deal, and challenge the narrative. Don't let our slogans be co-opted; don't let another war be justified on false pretences.
The Iranian people want peace, they want dignity, and they want the right to shape their own future. Free from bombs, free from fear, and free from foreign coercion. Thank you.
No War on Iran, CND’s webinar of 19 June 2025 is available to watch in full on the CND YouTube channel