Iran 'arrests UK embassy staff'

[Proudgrandson]

Iran 'arrests UK embassy staff'


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45343000/gif/_45343195_breaking_226x170.gif
Iran has detained eight local staff at the British embassy in Tehran on accusations of having a role in post-election riots, local reports said. The embassy has not yet confirmed the report from the semi-official Fars news agency, which did not name its source.

Relations between the countries are strained after Tehran accused the UK of inflaming unrest, which London denies.

Some 17 people are thought to have died in street protests after the disputed 12 June presidential poll.

Tehran has expelled two British diplomats, and the UK has responded with a similar measure.

"Eight local employees at the British embassy who had a considerable role in recent unrest were taken into custody," Fars said, without giving a source.

The UK Foreign Office said in London: "We have in the last few days received a number of, sometimes confused, reports that British nationals or others with British connections have been detained. We continue to raise them with the Iranian authorities."

....................

The lies folk will tell when they've rigged an election and done it badly.

On the other hand shouldn't we be proud that dear old blighty has managed despite its near bankrupt state to stir all this trouble in Iran! p-) Next thing you know we'll be ruling the waves again by being diabolically sneaky.

Anyway hope these employees get released and don't suffer for these fantasys the 'ruling party' are spinning to cover up their ballot box stuffing.

[RoyB]

Send in Cpt. Price.

[TheEvian100]

What is their obsession with the British? :roll:

PS: I know what happened in the 40's and 50's but jeez.

[Derbedeu]

What is their obsession with the British? :roll:

PS: I know what happened in the 40's and 50's but jeez.

Very easy: The US no longer has an embassy there, so the next best thing was to pick on the British in the hope of coalescing public support against "foreign interference", thereby hoping to quell the riots and channel their anger onto someone else. Don't think it'll work though.

[Proudgrandson]

What is their obsession with the British? :roll:

PS: I know what happened in the 40's and 50's but jeez.

Or alternatively they've seen 300 and are thinking 'Bloody redcoats'

We did lean on them quite often from the 1850's onwards, including a battering by the E.I.C in 1857.

[Snoshi]

Isn't this like declaration of war or something? Since they had to get into embassy to arrest them.

[Player]

Isn't this like declaration of war or something? Since they had to get into embassy to arrest them.

Didn't they already declare war on them when they kidnapped British sailors?

[Proudgrandson]

Britain and Iran's fraught history



By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45965000/jpg/_45965743_007539739-1.jpg Many in Iran are deeply suspicious of the British.

The mutual expulsion of diplomats by Iran and Britain shows that relations between these two old antagonists are alive and bad.

The expulsions started on the Iranian side when two British diplomats were expelled with the usual claim of "activities incompatible with their status".

This often means spying but it could mean anything and the Iranians did not explain. More out of routine than anger, Britain retaliated in kind.

It all followed the speech last Friday by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who called Britain the most "evil" of the "hungry wolves in ambush" on Iran.

The expulsions tell us quite a bit about the Iranian government - how paranoiac it remains and how ready to blame foreigners for its troubles.

'Devious'

But why has it singled out Britain?

There is a history to this.

"There is a deep-rooted belief in Iran that Britain is always up to something, is never passive and always devious," said Rosemary Hollis, Middle East analyst at City University in London.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45963000/jpg/_45963186_ayatollah_ap226.jpg
Ayatollah Khamenei has recently been highly critical of the UK.

"I meet it all the time with Iranians. It is a combination of history and current British involvement with Iran.

"One issue is the setting up of the BBC Persian TV channel.

"Another is the presence in the UK of the Iranian opposition group MKO."
The MKO is the People's Mujahedin Organisation, which was taken off the list of terrorist groups by the EU in January.

"But it is also possible that the Iranians are labelling the Brits as meddlers in order to avoid attacking the United States and to leave the door open to Obama," Ms Hollis adds.

US President Barack Obama has made an offer of talks with Iran to which Iran has not yet formally responded.

Humiliation

As for the history, it depends on how far back you want to go.
You could go back to 1813 and the Treaty of Gulistan, under which Persia was forced to concede territory to Russia. The treaty was put together by British diplomat Sir Gore Ouseley and is regarded as a humiliation in Iran.

The myth - or reality - of the devious British was established.
Britain was also instrumental in setting Iran's borders with India in the 1860s.

Then in the 1920s, British forces in Iran under General Edmund Ironside (later British land forces commander in World War II after Dunkirk) helped put Reza Shah on the Peacock throne. His son was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979, so there is a direct link back to British actions decades ago.

'Great Satan'

In more modern times, the event that really led to the mistrust of Britain - and the US - was the coup against the elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gifhttp://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif It is ironic that in the current crisis, the British government tried to keep a low profile, not wanting its 'historical baggage' ... to be used as an excuse by Iran to blame it for interference http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif


Mossadeq had wanted to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in which the British had a majority share. The British and Americans organised a coup, put Mossadeq under house arrest and placed Pahlavi firmly in control as Shah.

After the Shah himself was removed, the Islamic revolutionaries turned their attention more to the "Great Satan", the US, than the UK. Hostages were taken at the US embassy and President Carter launched a disastrous operation to try to free them. There followed many barren years.

There have been brief rapprochements now and then. An alliance of convenience between the Reagan administration and Iran saw the US get arms to Iran in exchange for the freeing of western hostages in Lebanon.
During the Iran-Iraq war, which the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein started, western support for Iraq was deeply resented in Iran.

Business as usual

More recently, Iran released 15 Royal Navy personnel after seizing them in the Gulf. But that turned out to be a gesture not a new policy of friendship.

The British Museum even tried to do its bit with an exhibition this year about the reign of Shah Abbas in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and for which it got the cooperation of the Iranian authorities.

But nothing has ever really been resolved and the antagonism brought about by suspicions surrounding Iran's nuclear programme and the sanctions imposed by the Security Council (pressed for by the US and UK) only made relations more tense.

It is ironic that in the current crisis, the British government tried to keep a low profile, not wanting its "historical baggage", as one official put it, to be used as an excuse by Iran to blame it for interference.

This has happened anyway. It is business as usual.

..................

Not just Iran's border with 'India' either, Persia always claimed the Afghan city of Herat and a good deal else, numerous mild scrimmages over that one.

[b0sco]

Better start writing up an apology speech, Gordon.

[Proudgrandson]

Didn't they already declare war on them when they kidnapped British sailors?

Where allowed to kidnap? I dread to think what the ROE's were.

[Scriptable]

The religious nuts in charge of Iran are in serious need of an ass kickin'.

[pg_ord]

Isn't this like declaration of war or something? Since they had to get into embassy to arrest them.
From LA Times
Iranian authorities arrest eight British embassy employees in Tehran (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-iran-britishembassy28-2009jun28,0,7411437.story)


Dubai, United Arab Emirates -- Iranian authorities arrested eight local employees of the British embassy in Tehran, accusing them of "playing major parts" in the recent unrest over a presidential election, the semi-official Fars news agency reported today.
If they are local the regime can do whatever the fvck they want to.

[themacedonian]

well this could be due to ...........

UK froze more than billion dollars few days ago.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article6565562.ece

The Government revealed last week in a written statement to Parliament that it had frozen a total of $1.6 billion of Iranian assets under three layers of United Nations sanctions since 2006, and separate European Union sanctions in 2008.



Also has anyone noticed that in the last week there have been a number of terrorist attacks in Sadr city in Iraq and other places against Iran friendly Shiite populations.

Things are becoming ugly.

[Proudgrandson]

well this could be due to ...........

UK froze more than billion dollars few days ago.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article6565562.ece

The Government revealed last week in a written statement to Parliament that it had frozen a total of $1.6 billion of Iranian assets under three layers of United Nations sanctions since 2006, and separate European Union sanctions in 2008.



Also has anyone noticed that in the last week there have been a number of terrorist attacks in Sadr city in Iraq and other places against Iran friendly Shiite populations.

Things are becoming ugly.

Thats down to Al-Qaeda's urgent wish to kill every Shia because their 'heretics'. And they want the civil war thats coming to kick off....Is it just me or has anyone else ever wondered how when there was a 'moderate' Islamic government in place in Iran pre-Ahmadinejad nobody made more effort to get them on side? Because if Al-Qaeda ever establish the 'Islamic Caliphate on Earth' Middle East wise Iran will be next in line for it after Israel.:|

[Lazy Lob]

They must be running out of Ipods.

[BearInBunnySuit]

The Iranian leadership is its own worst enemy.

I hope the staff are released soon and unharmed.

[Proudgrandson]

Only thing that concerns me greatly about this other than the fact that these local employees might be getting beaten up is....what if Iran's regime decideds to rebuild 'revolutionary fervour' with another embassy storming.

[AZZenny]

'beaten up' -- what a delicate way to put it. If it's anything more than a diplomatic tit-for-tat power game --- if the regime really believes their own paranoia, and they do seem awash in kool-aid -- they will be 'putting the question' to these folks, seeking names, proof, or at the least a convincingly faked confession.

The UK has long been hated by various nationalist groups in the ME and elsewhere -- they were terrible colonial administrators, and they permanently restructured the region with arrogant disregard for historic, cultural, or ethnic realities.

[Proudgrandson]

'beaten up' -- what a delicate way to put it. If it's anything more than a diplomatic tit-for-tat power game --- if the regime really believes their own paranoia, and they do seem awash in kool-aid -- they will be 'putting the question' to these folks, seeking names, proof, or at the least a convincingly faked confession.

The UK has long been hated by various nationalist groups in the ME and elsewhere -- they were terrible colonial administrators, and they permanently restructured the region with arrogant disregard for historic, cultural, or ethnic realities.

But still reflect on what the French were getting up to in Syria and the Lebanon in the 20's, the wars with the Druze, large scale disapperances in many cities (their main prison in Damascus was a place of dread), were we so bad. Or do you specifically mean Palestine?

[Lazy Lob]

'beaten up' -- what a delicate way to put it. If it's anything more than a diplomatic tit-for-tat power game --- if the regime really believes their own paranoia, and they do seem awash in kool-aid -- they will be 'putting the question' to these folks, seeking names, proof, or at the least a convincingly faked confession.

The UK has long been hated by various nationalist groups in the ME and elsewhere -- they were terrible colonial administrators, and they permanently restructured the region with arrogant disregard for historic, cultural, or ethnic realities.

Tit for tw@t?

As far as I know we haven't "arrested" anyone as yet.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder.

[AZZenny]

Tit for tw@t?

As far as I know we haven't "arrested" anyone as yet.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder.

Tit for tat in terms of UK freezing billions in assets, etc. But perhaps, to be more precise I should have said 'an escalation of the power-game.'

I think the UK has its head up its arse at least as far as the US does -- is that a chip on my shoulder?

[Lazy Lob]

Tit for tat in terms of UK freezing billions in assets, etc. But perhaps, to be more precise I should have said 'an escalation of the power-game.'

I think the UK has its head up its arse at least as far as the US does -- is that a chip on my shoulder?

Only if your shoulder resembles an arse.

[LordKitchener]

This reminds me of a documentary I saw on Iran about an pre-Revolution Iranian 1970's satirical-comedy show caled 'My Uncle Napoleon'. In the show, the mad old man blames everything that goes slightly wrong in his life on the British, no matter how trivial it is. It exemplifies the paranoia of the British by some generations of the Iranians.

While the West has an interest in seeing the opposition groups have some success in Iran, you cannot claim that they have fabricated this resistance movement - it has always existed no matter what the Ayatollah says.

[LordKitchener]

Is it just me or has anyone else ever wondered how when there was a 'moderate' Islamic government in place in Iran pre-Ahmadinejad nobody made more effort to get them on side?

Were the Ayatollah and his theo-fascist cronies not in power before Ahmadinejad just as they are now? The President has very little power anyway. This was always a hostile regime even with Khatami in office.

[Proudgrandson]

This reminds me of a documentary I saw on Iran about an pre-Revolution Iranian 1970's satirical-comedy show caled 'My Uncle Napoleon'. In the show, the mad old man blames everything that goes slightly wrong in his life on the British, no matter how trivial it is. It exemplifies the paranoia of the British by some generations of the Iranians.

While the West has an interest in seeing the opposition groups have some success in Iran, you cannot claim that they have fabricated this resistance movement - it has always existed no matter what the Ayatollah says.

Curious how Tsarist Russian which was just as heavily stickings its nose in never gets blamed for anything

[Proudgrandson]

Were the Ayatollah and his theo-fascist cronies not in power before Ahmadinejad just as they are now? The President has very little power anyway. This was always a hostile regime even with Khatami in office.

True as it turned out, I had a momentary outbreak of optimism though,

[TheEvian100]

Britain is not weak though, with proper leadership and public will, they can seriously damage the iranian regime. From covert ops within the country (area of expertise of the UK) up to financial war.

Conventionaly for the UK when those CVF carriers arrive and their type 45s get their proper weaponry, by 2020, they may even seriously threaten them on the seas. That's still a decade from now..

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Britain is not weak though, with proper leadership and public will, they can seriously damage the iranian regime. From covert ops within the country (area of expertise of the UK) up to financial war.

Conventionaly for the UK when those CVF carriers arrive and their type 45s get their proper weaponry, by 2020, they may even seriously threaten them on the seas. That's still a decade from now..Regardless of who is in power or public will, we usually are fairly pragmatic in dealing with Iran and their ilk. We have no need for dramatics or kick ass toys.

[Johnny_H02]

Better start writing up an apology speech, Gordon.
I'd rather they send Lord Kitchener, but I know better.

(http://img19.imageshack.us/i/its****ingonnowchaps.jpg/)

[a_very_ex_STAB]

The USA has long been hated by various nationalist groups in the ME and elsewhere -- they were terrible imperial administrators, and they permanently restructured the region with arrogant disregard for historic, cultural, or ethnic realities.

Fixed it for ya!

[a_very_ex_STAB]

Curious how Tsarist Russian which was just as heavily stickings its nose in never gets blamed for anything

I'm fairly sure that the Soviet Union occupied part of Iran in WW2 as well. The allies collectively ousted the last Shah's father who was suspected of pro Nazi sympathies. It was used as a route for American supplies into the USSR as a supplement to the Arctic convoys IIRC.