Ex-Iranian prisoner vows to stay on hunger strike outside London embassy until Trump strikes Iran
A former Iranian political prisoner has vowed to stay on hunger strike until Donald Trump unleashes military strikes against the Iranian regime.
Nasrin Roshan, 62, has refused to eat for five days while protesting 24/7 outside the US Embassy in Vauxhall, south London.
The US president repeatedly threatened military intervention against the Iranian authorities over the killing of protesters, but has since stepped back from the brink after Iran told him ‘the killing has stopped’.
Ms Roshan, who is feeling unwell and depleted of energy after five days without food, is calling on the US to ‘act now’ and to ‘stop playing with the Iranian people’.
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The campaigner, who spent a total of five and a half years in Iranian prisons, told Metro: ‘I feel so much pain for my people in Iran.
‘Trump said if the Islamic regime killed people, he’d help, now he is saying the opposite.
‘Why are you playing with the Iranian people? When are you going to help them?
‘Please act now to help them – they are being killed in the streets.’
Human rights observers the Human Rights Activists News Agency have confirmed more than 4,500 deaths during the anti-regime demonstrations that have been taking place since December.
More than 9,000 additional deaths are also under investigation, the agency added.
Ms Roshan started her hunger strike on Saturday directly opposite the gates of the US embassy.
She said anti-regime protestors have permission to protest there for 10 days, during which time she is not going anywhere and is even sleeping in a nearby car.
But the ex-prisoner – who is being supported by her husband and a few friends – said she ‘can’t sleep’ while the Iranian regime crackdowns on dissent in the country.
Ms Roshan described how the lack of food is starting to take its toll.
She said: ‘Until yesterday, I was good. But today, my mouth is very dry and I haven’t got energy.
‘It is not about hunger because my body doesn’t want to eat.
What can happen during a hunger strike?
Ian Miller, a historian of hunger strikes in British prisons, told Metro that a hunger strike can typically play out physiologically as follows:
Days One to Seven: decreasing heart rate, physical wasting, weight loss (as bodies eat up their fat reserves in the adipose tissue.
Days Eight to Fourteen: Bodies begin using glycogen stores (energy located in the liver and muscles). Ammonia produced giving a distinctive smell. Weight loss slows down. Loss of heart mass causing a slow heart beat.
Days Fifteen Onwards: Tendencies to collapse and become bedbound. Nightmares very common early on. Physical and psychological health worsens significantly. Very disturbed sleep. ‘Raving all night’, as one hunger strike termed it in the 1920s.
Around twenty to sixty/seventy days: Patients essentially in a state of complete exhaustion, but often still conscious until around 50 days.
Over 70 days: With zero medical intervention or food, this seems to be roughly the limit of survival. In 1920, hunger striker Terence MacSwiney lasted 74 days before he died.
‘My feet are in a lot of pain. My mouth is so dry and my lips are dry.’
Although she is drinking water during the hunger strike, Ms Roshan vowed to start a ‘dry hunger strike’ without water if Trump has not acted after 10 days.
She added: ‘I don’t know what more I can do to get the political world’s attention on Iran.’
Ms Roshan previously claimed to Metro that she was knocked out by a police riot shield while at a protest earlier in January.
The political activist was first locked up in Iran for four years at the age of 18.
She moved to the UK in 2000 until she was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport in November 2023 after visiting her family.
An Iranian court sentenced her to four years on charges of ‘assembly and collusion’ but was released after one and a half years.
She described her recent time in Iranian jail as ‘mental torture’.
Ms Roshan added: ‘It was a horrible experience. They did not give me my medication. They forced me to use their medication, but we could not trust it.’
Her hunger strike comes after Trump called for an end to Ayotollah Ali Khamenei’s 40-year-regime.
In an interview with Politico, he called the dictator ‘a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people.
He added: ‘It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran.’
The threat of US military action against the regime has not gone away, with US military assets appear to be moving in the direction of the Middle East.
The USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been in the South China Sea in recent days, passed through a key waterway connecting the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.
A US Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP the aircraft carrier and three accompanying destroyers were heading west.
Iran’s foreign minister has issued the most aggressive threat yet against Trump over any potential strike action.
He warned in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal: ‘Unlike the restraint Iran showed in June 2025, our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack.’
He added: An all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House.
‘It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe.’
The talks come six months after Israel and Iran fought a 12-day war in June, which the US joined to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran then retaliated and fired missiles at an American air base in Qatar.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency have estimated more than 4,500 deaths during the anti-regime protests.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult.
Despite this, images have emerged of protests across the country.
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