Ukraine’s Chief Rabbi greets Iranian hunger striker Vahid Beheshti in his hospital bed. Photo: Screenshot

An Iranian dissident on a hunger strike in London was visited in hospital this week by the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, who hailed him as a “hero” as the two of them affirmed that the Tehran regime is a “common enemy.”

Chief Rabbi Moshe Azman attended the hospital bedside of Vahid Beheshti, an Iranian opposition activist who has been on a hunger strike since Feb. 23 in a bid to pressure the British government to designate the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. A military and political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Iranian regime has supplied thousands of drones that Russian forces have used to devastating effect against Ukrainian civilian targets.

Sitting up in his bed to a record a video with Azman alongside him on Wednesday, Beheshti pointed out that he had been in hospital for the previous 13 days. He said he had been “blessed” to receive a visit from Azman, the chief rabbi of a country “that has been attacked by the IRGC too.”

Beheshti underlined that the two “share a common enemy.”

“We stand strong together in this battle,” he stated, as he and Azman grasped hands.

Lauding Beheshti as a “hero,” Azman responded that he “and all good people in the world pray for you and your health.”

He added that “with God’s help, the good people of Iran will change their country. Every day, we Ukrainian people see the damage caused by the Iranian drones. They destroy the infrastructure, they kill people.”

Azman has spent the last week in the UK, meeting British politicians and Jewish leaders. On Tuesday, he held talks at the House of Commons in London with MPs from the Ukraine All Party Parliamentary Group where they discussed a range of issues, including the seizure of Russian assets held abroad.