What's Iran's problem with Britain?

Britain is 'Great' again! For so many years, Iran has demeaningly referred to us as the 'Little Satan" compared to the 'Great Satan' of the USA. However, last Friday Britain was described in a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameneil as the most "evil" of the "hungry wolves in ambush" (link). The previous Sunday, the newly re-elected Iranian President Ahmadinejad, noted for saying that Israel should be wiped from the map (link), told the United States and Britain to stop interfering in the Islamic Republic's internal affairs after its presidential election (link). Really? I seem to remember Foreign Secretary David Miliband and other UK politicians deliberately avoiding any words of censure when pressed by reporters.

The history of relations between Britain and Iran has long been fraught (link) although we achieved a hiatus in the late '60s/early '70s when we trained the Shah's armed forces before the revolution. They even bought our frigates. More recently it has involved 'arresting' our Service personnel while they were fulfilling their UN duties boarding commercial vessels in the approaches to Iraqi ports. Then there is the question of Iran supplying Iraqi insurgents with explosive technology to kill coalition forces. Last week, Iran expelled two British embassy officials and now it has arrested locally-employed British embassy staff, supposedly because the British embassy has helped incite demonstrations against the election results. I say again, oh really?

How has this situation come about? Is it simply down to old wounds or is the BBC actively promoting insurrection in its new Farsi broadcasts on the World Service? One thing for sure, governments desperate enough to blame other nations for their self-inflicted woes and introduce harsh measures to control their own population generally come to grief... eventually. You don't even need to look further than the mirror.

Any thoughts?

 

When there's trouble at home start getting the public to focus on an enemy, imagined or otherwise...

 

It's just trying to detract from it own national con of the voting public. In one area there were more votes than people, so something wrong somewhere.

Besides all that, Brown is an ******** so easy for them to take the piss out of this government.

90 Seconds of the truth.

 

Well, I am a regular visitor to the BBC's Farsi site and I can say that there is certainly no incitement there, just honest reporting, which, bearing in mind the fact that Iranian news agencies will be somewhat reluctant to do that, is going to piss the Iranian regime off no end.

My thoughts on Iran's attitude towards us are quite simple, and they are tenuously linked to the unwarranted kidnapping (I chose that word deliberately) of our sailors and marines a couple of years ago. Ideologically, in the Middle East, and in Iran in particular, we rank only just behind the US and Israel when it comes to venting fury, and choosing someone to blame. Israel have no diplomatic representation in Iran (who can blame them?) and to mess with the US would be to invite military action....the US are spoiling to do that anyway and the Iranians know it. The Iranians need someone to blame to take their own people's minds off the fact that the presidential election has been plagued with 'irregularities' and who better than us? After all, what will we.....or indeed can we do about it? Sweet FA and the Iranians know it. A bitter pill to swallow....yes, but reality often is.

 

What's Irans problem with Britain?

Simples… OPERATION AJAX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état

 

It may be that the Iranian government have noticed all the publicity the British press have been giving to the mobile phone photographs which are coming out of Iran. They know that they can't stop it so are venting their spleen on us who are showing what is happening there. How dare we show Iran in a bad light! As is already stated, when in trouble at home create a diversion by attacking the 'infidels'.

 

As the home population feel the pinch, autocratic regimes always have to invent an external enemy to blame for their austerities. Sukarno was an example, a totally trumped-up hate against Malaysia to 'explain' to his beleagured people why they were having a rotten time. Kim Jong whatsit the same.

In fact G Brown's current hate on the BBC execs is a home-grown example, to take the heat off MPs and at the same time to keep the balls he is making of the economy off the main headlines.

NB saying that anyone who doesn't agree with you is against God is a prety old trick too.

 

Which is why we should be making all speed to replace oil with other forms of power. Get those Nuc power stations built at the rush.

 

Interesting comment on BBC news24 earlier. As previously stated, blame everything on outside influence (old, old trick) and provide a focus for demonstrations etc. As also previously stated we are No 3 in the Iranian hate pecking order. Israel and the USA do not have an embassy in Teheran but we do, hence trumped up arrests and expulsions so Dinnerjacket can demonstrate to the people what a strong man he is on the global stage.

 

Iran's distrust of Britain is intricately entwined with our imperial past and our policy of removing regimes we disapproved of, a policy that certainly continued until well into the late 1970s, if not beyond. In recent history we overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddeq in 1953 following his nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, cited above in Operation Ajax.

For a more comprehensive exposition of the current impasse, I suggest you listen to John Simpson, in BBC Radio 4's The Report.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lmqhl/The_Report_25_06_2009/

 

Imadinnerjacket neede some foreigners to blaim, a trick almost as old as the hills, and of their key hate countries we are the least likely to hit back with anything least of all a nuclear weapon.

 

Squirrel - Thank you (among the other contributors) for confirming the BBC's Farsi service as a red herring in this affair. However, it would be extraordinary if the Iranian hierarchy's paranoid criticism of Britain were simply down to events of more than 50 years ago. As some posters have suggested, perhaps Britain is being cited as the main troublemaker, if only for internal consumption, because it is the easiest target.

Things are moving on. Five of the nine arrested embassy staff have now been released (link) and now the EU is getting involved on Britain's behalf (link).

Did you know that the EU is Iran's largest trading partner (link)?

At heart, is this still about the nuclear issue or is the regime in Teheran genuinely worried for its own survival? John Tusa is due to report on Iran and the role of the USA and Britain in its development in Iran, A Revolutionary State on BBC Radio 4 at 1100 and I will be listening with interest. I believe there is much more of this story to unravel in the coming months.

 

A couple of thoughts:-

1. If you repeat a lie often enough then people will assume that it is the truth. Ahmadinejad said that 'Israel will disappear from the pages of history' - the MSM translated it as "Israel must be wiped from the map'. A not so subtle difference.

2. It may seem to the British that there was a period of hiatus when the Iranians bought British frigates and tanks, financed Chobham armour, trained in the UK etc etc. The Iranians see it a little differently; after Operation Ajax the British and the Americans installed a tame, puppet regime to run Iran on their behalf. Shah Pahlavi's totalitarian regime received lot's of Anglo-American muscle and gold. In return Britain and America gained control of Iranian energy supplies and could use Iran as a regional threat to the Arabs on the western littoral. The ordinary Iranian received torture and repression and saw the Iranian elite become increasingly wealthy with no trickle-down benefits.

The result of this was a shift to Islamic fundamentalism as the only alternative to the status quo. The present Iranian regime are now repeating the Pahlavi repression of the 20th Centuryin order to stay in power. Probably the only country in the world that want's to see Ahmadinejad as president of Iran is Israel; they need his bogeyman status as much as Ahmadinejad needs Israel's behaviour in occupied Palestine to continue. They feed from one another.

RM

 

Whilst I agree with you about the reasons why some Iranians have little love for the UK which had meddled in the country for most of the 20th C and the US which had done the same with perhaps more effect for much of the second half I would suggest the swing to Islamic fundamentalism was simply an accicent of timimg, and perhaps misplaced Soviet Roubles (a bit like the mispalced $ that ended up in the Taliobans hands a bit later)

At the time of the Iranian revolution there was a very definite rise in the concepts of radical Islam in much of the middle east, at that time probably most prevalent in Egypt with the rise of the Moslem Brotherhood. Certainly the Shah had become immensely unpopular and the radical clerics used this unrest to forge together a cohesive opposition. Eve so if it had not been Islam it would have been the communists, or even just another charismatic.

Where will the present unrest take us, I suspect no where, there is not enough impetus behind the protesters to push hard enough. It will need somethoing else to get the revolution over the top of the hill and freewheeling down the side of victory.

 

Exactly. Complete and utter bollocks.....especially so close after Obama's visit.....the Clerics have to now cling to extremist power in case, God forbid, anyone in Iran wants to meet the West half way.....quick switch from hating the States (thereby losing out on possible financial gain at some level for Iran) ? to keeping the fires stoked by attacking the UK now.....

Those leading nations around this planet really make me sick.Self-seeking, powerhungry b*stards, whatever side of the line they stand.

 

Perhaps we should ask George Galloway,who earns £2500 for 2 weekly programmes on PRESS TV, a news channel funded by the Iranian Government ?