The British anti-war movement Stop the War Coalition (STWC) has hosted a meeting in London to raise concern and awareness about plots in the making to launch an invasion on Iran.

The STWC also held a “Don't Attack Iran” rally in central London as the West is ratcheting up the tension with Iran and the threat of war grows.

Speakers at the event included Abbas Edalat from the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), Former British cabinet minister Tony Benn, Former MP George Galloway, Lindsey German from the Stop the War Coalition and London-based Iranian researcher Shirin Shafaie.

The meeting was the first event both to publicize the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) and to raise public awareness about the consequences of a war against Iran.

“Events are all too familiar: claims about weapons of mass destruction, the demonization of the government [of Iran], tightening sanctions, special forces operations in the country. All this against a background of growing tension across the Middle East. The anti-war movement now needs to commit to a national effort to stop Britain being dragged in to yet another disastrous war”, said Stop the War's Lindsey German.

Former British cabinet minister Tony Benn noted that the UK government has had “a long history of imperial intervention in the Middle East and Iran with the prime objective of controlling the country's vast oil resources as it happened in Iraq.”

Former MP George Galloway condemned the drumbeats, attacking 'the maniacs running the asylum' with their finger ready to press the emergency button again.

“Another cataclysm was on the horizon and that we were sleepwalking into a war with Iran”, Galloway said reminding the participants of the disastrous adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

At the London rally, Darren Johnson from the Green Party stated that “the drive towards war was immoral, against world peace and not the way forward,” also cautioning that peaceful diplomacy is the 'only solution'.

Abbas Edalat from CASMII said the Western alliance was attempting to tighten a political, diplomatic, economic and military noose around the Islamic Republic.

Edalat said the West began its anti-Iran sanctions regime soon after the victory of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, but the Islamic Republic “struck a blow against Western imperialism.”