Iranian British Man Chased, Barricaded Golders Green Attacker
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- Ashkan Asadian, 61, an Iranian-born naturalized British citizen, chased the perpetrator of the April 29, 2026 antisemitic stabbing in Golders Green, kicked the attacker and tried to grab the knife, giving 76-year-old Moshe Shine a chance to flee.
- Asadian then alerted a cashier that the attacker was armed and used a shopping cart to barricade the suspect inside a grocery store to buy police time, before eventually releasing him over fears for staff safety.
- Essa Suleiman, a 45-year-old Somali-born UK national, has been charged with three counts of attempted murder for the Golders Green stabbings of Shine and 34-year-old Shloime Rand, plus an earlier attack on acquaintance Ishmail Hussein in Southwark, south London.
- Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI), an apparently Iran-linked group, claimed the Golders Green attack and has also taken responsibility for other antisemitic incidents in Europe amid the war in Iran, though authorities are still investigating.
- Asadian, who came to the UK from Iran in 1999 and has two children living in Golders Green, told the BBC that Iranians and Jews in the neighborhood live side by side in harmony, adding: 'They're human.'
- The UK's top police officer said British Jews are facing their greatest-ever threat and called for 300 armed officers to be deployed to protect north London's Jewish community.
Why it matters: The Golders Green attack, charged as three counts of attempted murder, has escalated UK fears over antisemitic violence — prompting the country's top cop to call it the greatest-ever threat to British Jews and request 300 armed officers for north London. The Iran-linked group's claim of responsibility, if validated, would extend the Middle East war's reach into British streets, while Asadian's account of Jewish-Iranian coexistence offers a counter-narrative to the violence.
