Bishop of Chelmsford Guli Francis-Dehqani

Lord Speaker’s Corner returns as the Iranian-born Bishop of Chelmsford shares the extraordinary family story behind a pillowcase pierced by four bullets aimed at her father.

In the first episode of a new series, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean speaks to the Rt Revd Guli Francis-Dehqani about survival, faith, and what her experience reveals about Iran today. In this episode “My mother was shot. (She) threw herself over him in an effort to protect him” Bishop Francis-Dehqani recalls how, during the 1979 Iranian revolution, gunmen climbed into her family home and opened fire on her parents as they slept. After her brother was later killed in an ambush believed to target her father, the family fled to the UK, carrying with them a pillowcase that came to symbolise survival, forgiveness, and reconciliation. “I absolutely believe this regime is in its death throes, but death throes can last for quite a long time… democracy, the kind of freedom we might imagine, it's not born overnight. A nation has to learn to be a democracy, and Iran is far from that.”

Bishop Francis-Dehqani also reflects on the current conflict in Iran, explaining that power works more like a spider’s web than a pyramid. On the US/Israel attack, she says: “I had quite a strong sense that this is not how things are going to change in Iran… I don't know where this ends. It is horrific, but my sense is that President Trump unleashed something without fully understanding the consequences, imagining that it was going to be a quick fix. Underestimating actually the Iranian regime and the Iranian people.” Bishop Francis-Dehqani warns that ordinary Iranians are now caught between a vicious repression and fear of more bombing and need a credible resistance around which they can unite. Listen now to hear more of the Bishop of Chelmsford’s remarkable first-hand story and unique perspective on what is happening in Iran today.

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