Being British in Iran
Updated on 06 February 2009
As the British Council in Iran is forced to suspend operations, our international editor describes the Iranian attitude to the British.
Hold the front page - the British have supplied riot gear to the Iranians.
Well, it was back in 1979 when the Shah was in power but this week the Iran News, an English-language newspaper in Tehran, saw it as a headline nonetheless.
They are quoting documents released in Britain under the 30 year rule, but the intervening years have done little to lessen Iranian suspicion of the Great Satan's surreptitious cousin, the Little Satan.
This week the British Council announced that it had been forced to suspend operations because its 16 local staff had been intimidated - they were called into President Ahmadinejad's office and ordered to resign their positions or... well, the alternative didn't need to be spelt out.
It all goes back to 1953 when the British encouraged the Americans to join them in sponsoring a coup against the popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq who had nationalised the country's oil production. In Tehran, they think MI6 manipulated the CIA.
The latest manifestation is anger about a new BBC Persian-language TV channel. According to the Iranians, the purpose must be "espionage and psychological warfare". (The BBC, of course, deny this.)
President Obama says he wants to improve relations with the government in Tehran. Who knows if he will succeed? Tehran is probably the only place on earth where they think he will be doing whatever the British tell him.
