Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iran’s intimidation needs EU response

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iran’s intimidation needs EU response
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 29 2009 19:17 | Last updated: June 29 2009 19:17
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa973a5a-64d5-11de-a13f-00144feabdc0.html


The arrest and interrogation of Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran is alarming. Iran has form on embassies.

Its regime therefore needs to be made very certain that it will pay a high cost if it further crosses the lines of international law and diplomatic protocol.

The arrests, along with the ritual denunciation of and incitement against the UK by the government and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, are nothing but a transparent ruse to blame a manufactured external culprit for the civic uprising of Iranians against an equally manufactured landslide for Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s demagogic president.

The mullahs have justified their overreaction to the late surge of voters in favour of Mir-Hossein Moussavi by talking darkly of a “velvet revolution” and tenebrous conspiracies against the Islamic Republic. The fact is that Mr Moussavi, prime minister in the early years after the 1979 revolution, and his supporters in the establishment and the clergy, such as former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are seeking the reform of Iran’s blend of theocracy and dem ocracy, not to overthrow it. They can claim to be the authentic offspring of the revolution,which is precisely why they pose a threat to the legitimacy of Mr Khamenei and Mr Ahmadi-Nejad: an internal threat, cleaving the establishment.

Britain nevertheless makes an attractive target for a regime at bay. Its long and documented history of meddling in Iran resonates with most Iranians. In the late-19th and early 20th centuries it reduced Iran almost to a protectorate, extracting lucrative concessions in oil and minerals, tobacco and banking, which it protected by armed force and proxy rulers. Britain’s alliance with the US in toppling the nationalist Mossadegh government in 1953 is well-known.

The UK is also a natural proxy for the US for a regime nervous of the embrace of engagement proffered by Barack Obama. External pressure – real or invented – is a much more reliable tool for the mullahs to enforce national unity.

But the theocrats are genuinely alarmed by the BBC’s Persian TV service, which came on air this year and offers millions of Iranians a sober view of the issues and events that divide them. The revolutionaries will remember how the BBC helped their cause in 1978-79 with its reliable and timely chronicle of the turmoil.

Britain has rightly taken its case to its partners in the European Union, which have promised a “strong and collective” response if Tehran continues to harass embassy staff. Faced with retaliation from 27 countries rather than one “little Satan”, Iran might just think again. This is an important test of EU cohesion and solidarity. It must not fail.