Prince Harry is slammed for ‘giving ammunition to Iranian regime’s propaganda machine’

Prince Harry has been called a “stupid kid” and told to “take responsibility” after Iran used his confession to killing 25 Taliban. to defend the hanging of a British-Iranian citizen.

Current and former British military commanders accused the Duke of Sussex of “feeding ammunition” to Iran’s propaganda machine and exploiting his military career for financial gain.

Responding to UK criticism of the execution of 61-year-old Alireza Akbari at the weekend, Tehran said Britain was “in no position to preach” on human rights after the prince’s recent admission about the assassination of the Taliban in his memoirs Spare.

One commander said Harry had “become a tool for the Tehran regime”, while a colonel who served in Afghanistan said Harry should take responsibility for allowing Iran to compare the killing of a political opponent to legal deaths in a armed conflict.

To the disappointment of many former colleagues and military commanders, the prince chose to reveal his personal account of the enemies he had in mind.

He also described the dehumanization of his opponents on the battlefield, thinking of them as “chess pieces” that needed to be removed “from the board”, rather than human beings.

Iran seized on Harry’s comments after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the hanging of Akbari, after being accused of being an MI6 spy, as a “callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime”.

Yesterday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded, tweeting: “The British regime, whose member of the royal family sees the murder of 25 innocent people as the removal of chess pieces and has no regrets about the issue, and those who they turn a blind eye to a war crime, they are in no position to preach to others about human rights.’

Just days before his death, Mr. Akbari is believed to have been severely beaten in jail before giving what appeared to be forced confessions.

In an audio message broadcast by the BBC’s Persian service, he said he was tortured into admitting crimes he did not commit.

His Iranian captors described him as “one of the most important agents of the British intelligence service in Iran.”

Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West told The Sun: “Harry was a stupid boy who said what he said, but there is no equivalence to what Iran is doing.”

Colonel Richard Kemp, the UK’s former military commander in Afghanistan, said Harry had played into Tehran’s hands.

He said: ‘Harry should take full responsibility for giving ammunition to the propaganda machine of the murderous Iranian regime.

“While all decent people will reject Iran’s lies, many of its supporters will be strengthened by the exploitation of the duke’s reckless comments by the ayatollahs.”

Former Royal Navy commander Rear Admiral Chris Parry agreed, suggesting that the prince had effectively become a tool for the Tehran regime.

He said: ‘The Iranians are using it for propaganda purposes. Despite Prince Harry’s bumbling words, it is highly misleading to claim the equivalence between the legal killing of combatants in war and a show trial and political assassination by a dictatorial regime.

Prince Harry spent five months fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2012-13 as a gunner aboard an Apache attack helicopter.

The Army Air Corps AH-64 was equipped with Hellfire missiles and a 30mm cannon capable of disemboweling people in its path.

Harry’s deaths were recorded by a camera attached to the helicopter’s undercarriage. He also described seeing the footage to calculate how many Taliban deaths he was responsible for.

The admission sparked widespread condemnation from military figures and fears of reprisals from militant supporters.

Downing Street insisted that Akbari’s execution and the prince’s comments about his experiences in Afghanistan were separate issues.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “No one should be in any doubt that the execution of Alizera Akbari was a barbaric and politically motivated act without legitimacy.”

“Any comparison between that and service men and women carrying out legitimate actions would be completely false.”

Following Iran’s exploitation of the prince’s comments, former Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith said he hoped Harry would “reflect on that and not do something similar again.”

He added: “Iran criticizing us on human rights grounds would be a joke if it weren’t for the fact that they are maniacal, brutal, violent and dangerous.”

Former Defense Minister Alex Shelbrooke said: “I think Harry’s words were reckless. Everyone is aware of the work that military personnel do. So they are not looking to exploit that for their financial gain.’

Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, added: “We will not accept preaching from a terrorist state that weapons human life and industrializes hostage-taking.”

“Their rape and murder of innocent women demanding an end to their subjugation is appalling.”

And former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said the comparison was “absurd”.

‘It shows that the Iranians realize how badly they have behaved. The attempt to compare it to British troops, at the request of the Afghan government, fighting to protect Afghan democracy, is an absurd comparison by any measure,” he told the Mail.

“It is an attempt at cheap propaganda that will not convince even the Iranians, let alone the people of this country.”