History once again repeats itself but this time instead of the arch nemesis being America, it was the English whose Embassy was attacked and taken over by a group of radicals in Tehran, Iran sometime yesterday.

While 1979 is still fresh in my mind, as a political commentator and observer of history I couldn’t stop wondering, why the British Embassy, why now, and who were these people that instigated such an undiplomatic act that is nothing short of a declaration of war given that an embassy, according to codes of international relations, is considered part of a guest nations sovereign territory on a host nations soil.

There are two ways to look at this turn of event, one is from the Islamic regimes point of view that wanted to send a clear message to the West that the days of dictating its will on Iran are over and that with the backing of Russia and China as key allies (alternative trade partners) Iran is able to stand its ground and maintain its independence.  In which case this act, as undiplomatic and senseless as it was, intended to send a retaliatory response to the latest round of hard sanctions imposed by the West on Iran.

And the second point of view is that of a power struggle between the more prominent international actors over Iran, namely Russia, England and the United States.  In other words, one has to wonder whether the Embassy attack had Russians fingerprints all over it who encouraged this move as a preemptive strike to force the British out of Iran, or maybe it was the Americans who wanted to get back at the British for their role in the 1979 US hostage takeover, or could there have been other international state actors or non even none state actors in the mix who wanted to create a rift between Iran and England.

Time will tell but I can say this with relative certainty, things don’t look good in Iran and it’s not about to get any better and the Islamic regime is starting to feel the international pressure.