I've experienced nightly attacks by Iranian drones and their despotic regime deserves no sympathy

I’m saying this as someone who’s endured night after night of attacks by Iranian Shahed drones in Ukraine. Before the pearl-clutching becomes too constricting, let me reassure you that this is no revenge fantasy, or an expression of hatred for the Iranian people. They have languished under the regime of the mullahs for too long.

The regime itself, however, is as cartoonishly evil as it gets and deserves no legitimacy, or sympathy. Its malign influence extends far from Tehran to Kyiv and even Edinburgh.

Iran has supplied Shahed type 131 and 136 drones to Russia since the autumn of 2022 with the full knowledge that these weapons would be used to target civilians. They have limited battlefield use and are weapons of pure terror, much like the German V1 and V2 rockets during the Second World War.

Dreading the late-night lawnmower

Regimes like Iran’s and Russia’s should be fought, and any action towards their overthrowing should be welcomed, even if it comes from quarters unpalatable to the Scottish body politic, like Israel. Justification for the regime’s overthrow for its actions against its own people and in the countries of the Middle East abound; its actions in Ukraine are reason enough too.

Since 2022, Moscow has launched 28,743 Shahed-type drones against Ukraine — with 2,736, or roughly 9.5 per cent, fired in June this year alone. Though many are now manufactured in Russia under the name Geran 1/Geran 2, Iranian design, manufacturing and maintenance expertise remain vitally important to their operation.

Imagine lying in your bed late at night, you’ve heard the air-raid siren go off but you’re shattered, sleep-deprived from previous air raids or hot nights without electricity. You drift back to sleep, until the loud cracks of anti-aircraft fire wake you up again.

Then you hear the growl, a buzzing noise overhead that sounds like a lawnmower on its last legs. That’s the Shahed, and if you can hear it, it’s very close, maybe even over your apartment building. As awful the sound is, in that moment you pray you continue to hear it, because if it suddenly cuts out that growl might have been the last thing you ever hear as it drops on top of you.

That is the reality of living under Shahed drone attacks, a reality that most Ukrainians have had to face for three years now. Thousands have lost their homes, their loved ones and their lives as a result of this terror bombing.

Airstrikes or any other form of military campaign that halt Iran’s support for Russia, even incrementally or momentarily, or result in the regime’s eventual downfall, should be welcomed.

Iran’s interference in Scottish politics

Don’t feel any sympathy for its wretched government; you are an enemy or a target for manipulation as much as any Ukrainian. The fact that a number of pro-independence X accounts mysteriously went dark after an Israeli airstrike on June 13, which caused an internet blackout that affected 95 per cent of national connectivity, should not come as a surprise.

Iran sees us as a target whether we’re nationalists or unionists, their aim is to merely stoke division. With that being said, and while I wouldn’t be surprised if some fringe pro-UK accounts are also run by the regime’s security forces, Iranian interference in Scottish constitutional matters would be welcomed by some on the pro-independence lunatic left, the types for whom Scottish identity is merely a means to an end, an extension of class warfare.

Believers in mere ‘whataboutism’, where any cause, any regime and any atrocity can be justified so long as it is ostensibly opposed to American imperialism or the dreaded ‘Zionists’, this leftist fringe is no stranger to supporting Iran.

One of its darlings, former British diplomat and Israel-obsessed grievance-grifter Craig Murray, is well known to the regime’s state media. This is the same Murray who has backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, claimed the Ukrainian state tolerates a “current strain of Nazism in Ukrainian nationalism”, and regurgitated the baseless lie that Russian language speakers in the country’s east were being subjected to genocide.

Such views are a calumny, demonstrably false and ridiculous as anyone who has actually been to Ukraine can attest. Murray also believes that despotic regimes like Iran are entitled to defend themselves, while countries like Ukraine are apparently not.

Such views are those of a fringe, granted, and are demonstrably false and usually motivated by either ill-placed grievance or attention-seeking behaviour, but nonetheless, they are there.

They represent the very worst of Scottish politics, a hateful cancer on the independence movement that distorts truth to suit their own aims. That Iran facilitates the terror bombing of one country, Ukraine, while supporting malcontents in ours who condemn the victims of that terror as Nazis, highlights the unscrupulousness of both.

Do not give Iran, nor its stooges, any of your sympathy, wherever they may be. The country’s leaders are happy to weaponise social media manipulation and bad-faith actors in our body politic, and any time they receive a bloody nose should be welcomed.

Wait until you’ve lived under a Shahed’s growl before you think otherwise.

Andrew Sweeney is a writer and journalist based in Kyiv, specialising in business and medical reporting