作者： admin

Beneath the scorching dry-season winds that cut through the narrow lanes of Lucknow’s historic old city, an unmistakable display of solidarity with Iran fills every public space. At Hussainabad Chowk, the city’s bustling central open plaza, towering posters of the recently assassinated Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei billow, one bearing a Hindi inscription that reads: “Heartfelt and tearful homage to the great leader and guide of world peace and humanity, Martyr Ayatollah Sajjad Ali Husaini Khamenei Sahib.” Another poster positions Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, standing protectively behind his slain father, hands resting gently on his shoulders.

Further into the warren of old city alleyways, reverence for Iran’s ayatollahs appears everywhere: hand-painted graffiti, framed portraits, and street-side murals line every wall. In a stark act of protest, Israeli and American flags are painted directly onto the dusty paving stones, alongside portraits of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, placed deliberately to be stepped on by passing pedestrians. Netanyahu’s image is the most heavily worn, reduced to faint fragments against the tattered blue-and-white backdrop of the Israeli flag, while Trump’s portrait remains partially intact—a vivid visual marker of the relative intensity of public anger toward each figure, shaped by their role in the strikes that killed Khamenei.

This grassroots activism is not a new outburst: soon after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, local shopkeepers in old Lucknow launched a grassroots boycott of American and Israeli-linked goods, pouring thousands of bottles of Coca-Cola down open drains. Today, the only cola stocked on store shelves is Campa Cola, a popular Indian-made alternative. What makes this display of anti-Israel protest particularly striking is its location: it unfolds in the country of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of Israel’s closest global allies.

Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, carries centuries of deep cultural and religious ties to Iran. Once ruled by the Nawabs of Lucknow, a Persian-origin dynasty that governed the Awadh region through the 18th and 19th centuries, the city grew into one of South Asia’s preeminent centers of Indo-Islamic culture, with its art, cuisine, music, and architecture all bearing enduring West Asian influences. Today, it is home to India’s largest Shia Muslim community, concentrated heavily in the old city’s winding neighborhoods.

When news broke on February 28 of the joint U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Khamenei, spontaneous protests erupted across old Lucknow within hours. Chants of “America Murdabad” and “Israel Murdabad”—translated as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”—echoed off the Chowk’s historic sandstone walls. By sunset, thousands of mourners gathered at Bada Imambara, Lucknow’s iconic 18th-century Shia religious site and top tourist attraction, to light candles in honor of Khamenei, whom many now honor as a martyr.

A historic slogan tied to the core of Shia identity was quickly reworked to reflect the moment: the centuries-old cry “Hussaini maaroge, har ghar Hussaini Niklega” (“If you kill one Hussaini, a hundred more will rise from every home”), rooted in the 680 CE martyrdom of Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala, became “Tum kitne Khamenei maaroge, har ghar se Khamenei niklega” (“If you kill one Khamenei, thousands more will emerge from every household”). The adaptation sent a clear message: the Shia community of Lucknow views itself as an integral part of the global Shia resistance movement.

“Lucknow’s historical relationship with Iran is such that it was once called the Shiraz of the East,” explains Akbar Mehdi, a young Shia cleric originally from a small town east of Lucknow who now resides in the Iranian holy city of Qom. Mehdi returned to India for the holy month of Ramadan shortly before the strike and has been unable to return to Iran amid the ongoing conflict. “In dining customs, in everyday conversation, an Iranian imprint is clearly visible across our culture here,” he said.

While connections between Lucknow and Iran predate the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the depth of ideological alignment grew dramatically in the decades that followed, according to Ziyaullah Siddiqui, co-editor of the Urdu-language news portal Qasidnama. His co-editor Shibli Beg explains that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s introduction of the concept of Wilayat-e-Faqih—rule by Islamic jurists as a temporary guardianship before the messianic return of the Mehdi—shifted the entire orientation of Lucknow’s Shia community. After 1979, the community’s center of gravity moved from local religious affairs to an increasingly Iran-centric global outlook, with hundreds of young Lucknow Shias traveling to Iran for religious education, and nearly all of the city’s most prominent senior clerics completing their studies in Iranian seminaries.

The ancestral ties binding the two regions run even deeper than the revolution: just a short drive from Lucknow, the small village of Kintoor sits amid the lush, fertile paddy fields of the Gangetic Plains, and it is the ancestral birthplace of Khomeini himself. Khomeini’s grandfather, Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, was born in Kintoor in 1790 before migrating to the Iranian village of Khomein at age 40.

In the neighboring village of Rasulpur, Middle East Eye met Rehan Kazmi, a local doctor, descendant of Khomeini, and distant cousin of Iran’s first revolutionary supreme leader, who also founded the Imam Khomeini Foundation to preserve the family’s ancestral connection to the region. “The Kazmi family of Rasulpur and the Kazmi-Musavi family of Kintoor share the same bloodline,” Kazmi explained during an interview in his clinic, where four framed images hang on the wall: a local Sufi saint Haji Waris Ali Shah, a piece of embroidered Islamic calligraphy, Ali Khamenei, and Ruhollah Khomeini. “Around 900 years ago, our ancestors moved to this land from Nishapur in Iran and settled here. We have been Indians ever since,” he said, recalling that even during his childhood in the village, Farsi was so commonly spoken that “even the chickens understood Farsi commands.”

Kazmi recalled that within hours of news of Khamenei’s assassination breaking on February 28, villagers across the region took to the streets to condemn the strike and express solidarity with Iran. They marched carrying portraits of Khomeini and Khamenei, all local shops closed their doors, and the village observed three days of official mourning.

While Lucknow is home to India’s largest Shia community, the city’s overall population is majority Hindu, and Uttar Pradesh is governed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a controversial Hindu nationalist priest-politician infamous for his anti-Muslim rhetoric and repeated actions that stoke inter-religious communal tension. He once claimed “Muslims did no favour to India by staying here.” Yet despite this tense political context, local journalist Siddiqui noted that aside from a tiny number of isolated provocations early on, the widespread pro-Iran protests have seen remarkably little communal pushback. “Lucknow is a city where Hindu-Muslim riots have never taken root. During the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, the city was largely spared the bloodshed that tore apart other parts of the subcontinent. People here are sensible. This is a city of tehzeeb—of civilisation,” he said.

By mid-March, the nature of the solidarity movement shifted: large, public street protests gave way to coordinated humanitarian fundraising for Iranian civilians affected by the ongoing war. Even the poorest members of the community contributed what they could, Kazmi said. “Even very poor daily wage labourers gave whatever small change they had. It shows how deeply people here care about this cause.” One young donor, who himself relied on casual work to support his family and clearly had little to spare, told organizers: “Such is my love for Iran, I could not give less.”

The gap between this widespread grassroots solidarity and India’s official foreign policy could not be wider. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in New Delhi maintains extremely close ties to Israel: India is the world’s largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, and just three days before the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran began, Modi completed a high-profile state visit to Israel. Standing alongside Netanyahu on February 25, Modi declared: “Israel is the Fatherland, India is the Motherland,” and even noted that his birthday falls on the same date that India first formally recognized Israel, framing the alliance as a personally fated bond. Just two days after that visit, the war on Iran began.

The conflict has already delivered tangible economic harm to India, which relies almost entirely on energy shipments passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Nine out of 10 Indian households rely on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders for cooking, and roughly 60% of India’s total LPG imports pass through the strategic waterway. From the first day of the war, Indian households faced sharp price hikes and long waiting lines for refills, and widespread public panic has gripped the country ever since. When negotiations between the U.S. and Iran collapsed in mid-May, Modi publicly called on Indian citizens to cut energy use by using public transport and working from home wherever possible.

“Both the ordinary people of India and Iran are unhappy with India aligning so closely with Israel,” cleric Akbar Mehdi said. “People here can tell truth from falsehood. Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine—this is the path of truth, the path of Karbala, the path of Islam.”

Today, India presents a picture of two competing national narratives existing side by side. On one side is the BJP government, which has refused to condemn Israel’s military campaign, even as its own supporters grow increasingly anxious about the economic fallout of the conflict. On the other side is the grassroots pro-Iran solidarity movement, whose leaders are hesitant to openly challenge the central government: after 12 years of BJP rule, India’s Muslim community as a whole, and Shia Muslims in particular, are a marginalized minority with very little representation in national politics, and face widespread systemic pressure. “We cannot speak openly against the government, because of the fear and the constant pressure we live under,” Mehdi explained.

Once a leading global voice for Palestinian statehood and the first large country to cut diplomatic ties with apartheid South Africa, India now maintains a deliberate silence on the violation of Iran’s sovereignty, though it has also walked back its early overtly pro-Israel rhetoric in the face of growing domestic and regional discontent. Many critics in Lucknow argue that the BJP’s current foreign policy is unmoored and weak, leaving India increasingly isolated across West Asia as anti-Western and pro-resistance sentiment spreads across Asia.

For Rehan Kazmi, the shift in India’s longstanding principles is the core of the problem. “The leaders who built independent India experienced oppression themselves, they stood with the victims of colonialism. They understood what was happening in Palestine, because they had fought the same fight. Our ancestors sacrificed everything to free this country. Today, the soul of India is under attack. If the soul is gone, the body has no meaning.”

More than three months have passed since the United States and Israel opened military hostilities against Iran, and for ordinary Iranian citizens across Tehran, every day has been defined by a single, draining reality: a liminal state of neither open war nor lasting peace that has left nearly all facets of daily life frozen. For 38-year-old Tehran resident Afshin, his weariness echoes the sentiment of a large swathe of the population. “We’re exhausted,” he shared in an interview. “It’s either been war since last summer, or the constant shadow of war. I hope they reach a deal so we can finally escape this suspended state… I just want life to go back to normal.”

Against this backdrop of persistent instability, many Iranians hold a fragile, tentative hope that indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington, brokered by regional intermediaries including Pakistan and Qatar, will pull the country out of its current crisis. These talks have continued despite major escalations: recent U.S. airstrikes on southern Iran and Israel’s ongoing ground invasion of southern Lebanon have failed to derail the diplomatic process entirely. Over the past week, circulating reports suggest a potential preliminary deal that would institute a 60-day mutual ceasefire, creating space for negotiators to hammer out a more comprehensive agreement addressing longstanding sticking points, including Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the relief of crippling U.S. economic sanctions.

Yet for all the quiet hope, no guarantee of a breakthrough exists, and the endless uncertainty has become a heavy emotional burden that most Iranians struggle to carry week after week. While 27-year-old Tehran resident Hediyeh suspects a preliminary agreement has already been finalized behind closed doors—telling Middle East Eye that “it appears they’re only still negotiating on how and when to announce it”—she remains deeply skeptical of how long any deal will hold. She notes that public speculation already frames the 60-day ceasefire as merely a delay for tougher negotiations on core issues to come later. “But what if there isn’t a final agreement? Honestly, we’re tired. We are tired of hearing about uranium and the nuclear programme and negotiations and ‘informed sources who asked not to be named,’” she said.

For many Iranians, recent history only fuels deep distrust of the ongoing diplomatic process. Both the 12-day conflict last year and the new war that began in late February broke out while Iranian and U.S. diplomats were already engaged in indirect talks through intermediaries. That pattern has left many convinced another outbreak of hostilities could come at any time, even amid current negotiations. “I don’t trust Trump anymore,” 46-year-old Mohammad, another Tehran resident, told Middle East Eye. “Two times he attacked us while we were negotiating. Why shouldn’t it happen a third time? All this uncertainty drags my mind more towards the possibility of another war.”

Trump’s own erratic public messaging has only amplified this uncertainty: the U.S. president has shifted wildly day to day, sometimes posting respectful messages to Iranian officials on social media and claiming a deal is close, only to turn around days later and tell reporters he is unhappy with proposed terms and issue new threats of military action. This inconsistency has filtered through his own administration, creating whiplash for observers both inside and outside Iran. On May 28, the Associated Press cited multiple senior U.S. officials reporting that the full text of a preliminary agreement had been finalized and was waiting for Trump’s approval. Just hours later, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, an outlet aligned with the country’s Revolutionary Guards, rejected the report entirely. Citing a senior Iranian negotiator, Tasnim confirmed no final text had been agreed, and no such update had been shared with Pakistani mediators. The conflicting reports have only deepened public suspicion across Iran.

For business owners like 58-year-old clothing retailer Hamidreza, this months-long uncertainty has paralyzed economic activity across the country, from large enterprises to ordinary households. “Everything in our lives is hanging in the air. We don’t know what to do. The market is terrible. We can’t plan ahead. We can’t even visualise the future adequately. Customers are in exactly the same situation,” he explained. Asked if he believes a deal will ever be reached, he laughed bitterly. “Trump himself likely doesn’t know, much less me. Anyone who tells you with certainty what’s going to happen is a charlatan. The world is now dealing with a man who goes into one night’s sleep and wakes up the next morning saying something totally different. How can anyone properly and confidently predict anything, when so much of global politics rests on someone this unpredictable?”

This uncertainty has not only strained public mood and business activity—it has upended concrete, long-held personal plans for many Iranians. Thirty-one-year-old lab technician Sima, who had been planning to pursue a master’s degree in Europe, has seen her dream put on indefinite hold. Visa processing for most Iranians has effectively frozen amid the current crisis, she explained. “Many European embassies in Tehran are essentially semi-shut down. You cannot get an appointment in Iran, they won’t permit you to apply through embassies in neighbouring countries either,” she said. After spending months securing admission to a reputable Italian university, the Iranian rial collapsed in value, completely wiping out her carefully calculated budget for study abroad. Even with an acceptance letter in hand, she cannot book a visa appointment—and the new academic year is just months away.

Not all Iranians are pushing for a rapid deal with Washington, either. Some argue that a hasty agreement could become another strategic trap that leaves Iran surrendering key leverage without gaining any meaningful, lasting concessions. Forty-one-year-old civil engineer Mehdi is deeply pessimistic about the current negotiation framework, questioning what Iran will actually gain in exchange for the concessions it is being asked to make. “If they stopped the war and went back to bargaining, it’s from pressure associated with the Strait of Hormuz and increasing oil costs,” he noted. “So now we reopen the strait and in return they return a tiny fraction of our own frozen cash? That sounds absurd to me.”

Mehdi fears that any temporary ceasefire deal will ultimately weaken Iran’s position without preventing a future full-scale conflict. “I’m not saying I like war,” he clarified. “But do you know what’s worse than war? When they can go wherever they want, blow up parts of your country, and nothing really happens in return. That’s how things played out for years in Syria.” He warns that if Iran eases economic pressure on the U.S. and global markets, Washington and Israel will simply return to all-out military action once Iran has given up its leverage.

For now, the majority of ordinary Iranians are trapped between two equally frightening outcomes: the immediate fear of a resumption of full-scale war, and the long-term fear that a flawed, fragile peace will only delay the inevitable conflict, leaving them exhausted and adrift in limbo for months or years to come.

On a sweltering March afternoon, hundreds of men clad in all black marched in a winding procession through the main thoroughfares of Kano, one of Nigeria’s largest northern cities. They carried framed portraits of Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, waved Iranian national flags, and filled the air with chants denouncing joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iran, declaring unwavering solidarity with what they called “a nation under oppression.”

To casual onlookers lingering at roadside storefronts or peering out from passing public buses, the demonstration looked like a scene borrowed from a conflict drama unfolding thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East. But for Nigeria’s minority Shia Muslim community, the public rally was far more than performance: the US-Israeli campaign against Iran hits close to home, bound by decades of ideological, religious, and cultural ties.

In the weeks following the outbreak of the latest Middle Eastern conflict, nearly identical pro-Iran demonstrations have cropped up across major Nigerian cities, from Kano and Sokoto to Gombe and the federal capital Abuja. Organized primarily by members and supporters of the proscribed Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) — one of the most influential Shia movements across the African continent — these rallies lay bare a stark reality: global geopolitical tensions can reverberate powerfully among local religious communities thousands of miles from active battlefields.

The gatherings also underscore the persistent ideological pull Iran has maintained among segments of Nigeria’s Shia population, nearly 50 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran inspired grassroots movements across the Middle East and large swathes of Africa. “We believe Iran is standing against oppression and foreign domination,” explained Ibrahim Musa, a 32-year-old local trader who joined the Kano march. “As Shia Muslims, we feel connected to their struggle.”

Nearly 100 days have passed since the February 28 US-Israeli attacks on Iran ignited a broader regional conflict, and its economic and political aftershocks continue to ripple far beyond the Middle East. In Nigeria, where the vast majority of the country’s large Muslim population identifies as Sunni, the Shia minority has cultivated deep spiritual and ideological bonds with Iran for generations, viewing the country as a global symbol of anti-imperial resistance. These ties solidified in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the IMN emerged under the leadership of Sheikh Ibrahim el-Zakzaky.

Drawing direct inspiration from Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Zakzaky built a movement centered on grassroots political activism, community social welfare programs, and uncompromising opposition to Western political influence in West Africa. Over decades, the IMN built formal educational and religious partnerships with Tehran, with hundreds of members traveling to Iran to pursue advanced Islamic theological studies. Today, Iran remains a potent symbolic touchstone for much of Nigeria’s Shia community.

“Supporting Iran is not only about politics. Many people see it as defending Muslim dignity against powerful Western countries,” noted Abdullahi Sani, a Shia cleric based in Sokoto, in an interview with Middle East Eye.

Moses Abolade, a leading African geopolitics scholar and peacebuilding consultant with the Peace Education and Practice Network, explained that Iran has spent decades carefully building ties across African nations through religious training scholarships, investment in local religious institutions, humanitarian development projects, and targeted diplomatic outreach. While Tehran’s overall influence on the continent pales in comparison to global powers like China, the United States, and Russia, it has successfully nurtured deep loyalty among Shia minority communities in countries including Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania.

“The recent protests by some Nigerian Shia Muslims over the US-Israel-Iran tensions reflect how global conflicts increasingly shape local identities, emotions, and public discourse far beyond the Middle East,” Abolade told Middle East Eye. “For many participants, Iran represents not just a sovereign nation, but a symbol of transnational religious and political solidarity. While these demonstrations may not shift the balance of global geopolitics directly, they deliver symbolic morale boost and reinforce narratives of international solidarity that strengthen Iran’s ideological standing against Western powers.”

Even so, Abolade emphasized that the rallies do not represent the views of all Nigerians or all Nigerian Muslims, and warned that framing the conflict through a sectarian lens risks deepening existing domestic social divides. “The deeper concern is how transnational narratives, social media amplification, and global political tensions can worsen polarization, spread misinformation, and stoke sectarian mistrust within already fragile Nigerian society,” he said. “Nigeria’s extraordinary religious and ethnic diversity demands that these issues be approached with extreme caution and responsibility to avoid importing foreign conflicts into local community dynamics.”

For Nigeria’s Shia community, which has long faced official suspicion and repeated government crackdowns, the protests also serve a quiet domestic political purpose. The IMN has endured years of tense, often hostile relations with the Nigerian federal government, particularly after a 2015 clash in Zaria where Nigerian army forces killed hundreds of IMN members. The government formally banned the movement in 2019, and in the years since, IMN members have organized regular public demonstrations to demand accountability for the Zaria killings and greater official recognition of the movement. For many members, global developments connected to Iran act as a natural rallying point, creating space to reaffirm their shared religious and political identity and reinforce collective unity.

Not all observers view the demonstrations as benign, however. Retired Colonel AY Gwandu, a senior security official at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, noted that “there is inherent concern whenever foreign conflicts begin to shape the activities of local religious groups.” He added that many ordinary Nigerians fear the rallies could deepen domestic sectarian divides or create new domestic security risks.

Nigeria has struggled for decades with violent insurgency linked to Sunni extremist groups including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. While the IMN holds distinct ideological positions that separate it from these extremist organizations, Nigerian security agencies have continued to closely monitor the movement’s activities. Although authorities have occasionally dispersed IMN gatherings over public safety concerns, the recent pro-Iran demonstrations have remained overwhelmingly peaceful.

Even so, many residents of northern Nigeria still worry that these displays could heighten sectarian tensions in a country already grappling with chronic insecurity, rising religious extremism, and deep political instability. Political analysts add that the demonstrations also put Nigeria in a diplomatically delicate position, as the country maintains formal ties with Western nations, Israel, Gulf Arab states, and Iran simultaneously. While open public displays of support for Tehran by local groups are unlikely to shift Nigeria’s official foreign policy directly, they highlight how increasingly global power rivalries are reshaping domestic political discourse in African states.

Political scientist Abdulqodir Yunus explained that the Nigerian government is currently navigating pressure to “balance respect for freedom of expression with legitimate domestic security concerns.” He added that “these protests make clear that international conflicts now have unavoidable local dimensions” across the globe.

For the protesters themselves, however, the movement is as much about collective belonging as it is about geopolitics. In Kano, demonstrators of all ages — including women and children — marched through crowded commercial streets under heavy police observation. Some carried large banners accusing the United States and Israel of unprovoked aggression, while others called on the international community to stand with Iran. Similar scenes were documented across Sokoto and Gombe States, where participants chanted for unity and condemned Western military intervention in the Middle East. While solidarity with Iran was the rally’s official central theme, the gatherings also doubled as public assertions of religious identity and resistance to what participants frame as global injustice.

“If another Muslim nation is suffering, we cannot ignore it,” said Musa, the Kano trader. At a rally in Gombe, religious chants filled the afternoon air, punctuated by large posters featuring images of Iranian leaders alongside portraits of IMN founder Zakzaky.

To outside observers, this display of transnational solidarity may seem striking in a West African nation grappling with its own severe economic struggles and security crises, but protesters insist their shared struggle transcends geographic borders. For Tehran, these public displays across African cities confirm that the Islamic Republic’s ideological message still resonates globally, even amid decades of diplomatic isolation and crippling economic sanctions. For Nigerian Shia, the rallies reaffirm their connection to a broader transnational movement.

“These protests give us a voice,” said Fatima Aliyu, a university student who joined the demonstration at Abuja’s National Mosque. “Even though we are far away, we want Iran to know they are not alone.”