British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer warned that any peace agreement on Ukraine must not embolden Iran in a joint press conference with US President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday.
"We have to win the peace," Starmer said. "And that's what we must do now. Because it can't be peace that rewards the aggressor or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran. We agree history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader. So the stakes, they couldn't be higher."
Trump, speaking alongside Starmer, said it was necessary to secure a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
The visit comes ahead of Trump's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slated for Friday.
On Sunday, Zelensky said Russia launched 267 attack drones on Ukraine, marking the largest single assault since the use of Iranian-made projectiles began following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"On the eve of the third anniversary of the full-scale war, Russia launched 267 attack drones against Ukraine—the largest attack since Iranian drones began striking Ukrainian cities and villages," he said in a post on X.
On Wednesday, the US Treasury levied sanctions on six entities in Hong Kong and mainland China it said facilitate the acquisition of parts for armed drones produced by Iran, as part of Washington's "maximum pressure" campaign on Tehran.
“Iran continues to try to find new ways to procure the key components it needs to bolster its UAV weapons program through new front companies and third-country suppliers,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles.
The US state department said Washington was determined to thwart the program.
"These programs produce missiles and drones that Iran uses against our allies and exports to its terror proxy groups and Russia," it said in a statement.
Iranian drones have repeatedly been deployed in attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and other civilian targets. The Shahed 136 drone is typically launched alongside cruise and ballistic missile attacks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.
A total of 108,138 people claimed asylum, marking an 18% increase from the previous year and surpassing a record set in 2002.
Iranian nationals ranked third in asylum claims in the UK in 2024 with 8,099 claims. Pakistan had the highest number of claims with 10,542, followed by Afghanistan with 8,508.
A further analysis of the data suggests a notable increase in asylum applications from Iranians, particularly in 2022, with the highest surge occurring in Q4 of that year, with 3,686 applications.
The spike likely may reflect growing migration pressures driven by the nationwide protests and state repression on demonstrations following the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
The nationwide protest movement dubbed the Woman Life Freedom movement was met with increasingly violent government crackdowns, prompting many Iranians to seek asylum abroad.
During the protests, security forces killed at least 550 protesters, including children, and imprisoned over 20,000 people.
From Q1 2023 onwards, while there was some fluctuation but asylum applications remained relatively high at consistently above 1,500 per quarter for non-unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and over 100 for UASC.
The continued upward trend through Q3 and Q4 of 2024 shows sustained asylum-seeking activity, though the surge in Q4 2022 remains the most significant increase in recent years.
However, despite the rise in applications, the number of decisions granting protection has not kept pace. Of 3,686 applications made by Iranians in Q2 2024, only 1,324 were granted protection.
The highest number of grants occurred in Q3 of 2023, when 4,647 Iranians were granted protection.
This disparity between grants of protection compared to applications suggests the lengthy immigration processing times are contributing to a backlog.
