Tag Archives: England

Dec 1 2011

Britain and Iran face-off as diplomatic ties reach a new low

As the clock ticks, Iran now has less than 24 hours to evacuate its diplomatic staff from London. The British – Iranian tumultuous relationship has hit a new low in light of the Wests crippling sanctions aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

But beyond this latest diplomatic stand-off one must understand that from a domestic point of view the theocracy in Iran is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The regime knows full-well that the slightest behavior change and a move towards rapprochement with the West will weaken its legitimacy from within specifically because of its 32 years anti-Western rhetoric. Those hardliners who for over 3 decades have towed this line, will inevitably put themselves at great risk of prosecution in the court of public opinion in Iran if they shift from this position. Behavior change in their view is political suicide as it will inevitably lead to regime change and regime sympathizers such as the Supreme leader will not accept this political discourse.

So, now realizing that the regime in Tehran is incapacitated to change because of its innate nature and therefore unwilling to budge, is the West ready to push for regime change by supporting the people of Iran who are ready to start a new chapter of better relationships between their country and the West. It’s time for a new beginning.

Nov 30 2011

Iranian revolutionaries storm foreign Embassy in Tehran, AGAIN

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.

 

Mar 25 2010

Has Israel crossed the line and has England reacted accordingly?

There has been considerable speculation in the past few weeks about the US-Israeli relationship, but English-Israeli relations may now be in trouble. 

England took an “extraordinary step” Tuesday when it expelled an Israeli diplomat after “concluding there was compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for the use of forged English passports in the plot to slay a senior Hamas operative in Dubai,” the Associated Press reported.  This is Englands first expulsion of an Israeli diplomatic official in more than 20 years.

England’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband commented that the Dubai scandal has “badly dented” trust between the two nations, and he demanded “formal assurances” that such an event would never happen again.  He took his biting rebuke one step further and advised UK citizens traveling to Israel that their identity might be at risk.

“We have concluded that there are compelling reasons to believe that Israel was responsible for the misuse of the British passports,”  Miliband said.

England’s Serious and Organized Crime Agency found the English passports used in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai two months ago were high-quality forgeries of authentic documents handled by Israeli officials in Israel or in other countries.  Said Miliband, the fakes were almost surely “made by a state intelligence service.”

Miliband however did not directly accuse Israel of involvement in the Dubai assassination.