Great Britain Versus Iran: A Brief History.

Almost everybody with experience of protest, insurrection and international politics accept that Iran's current protests have little to do with democracy or freedom and are now simply the product of interference by foreign governments with old scores to settle. The only question left is which governments are involved and why? Due to US President Bush's 7 year Global War on Terror that considered Iran to be part of an axis of evil and hoped to build an arc of freedom across the middle east made up of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iran a lot of people are laying the blame firmly at the feet of the CIA. To their credit I don't think this is the case because America is a true democracy so when it's President changes it's policies change almost overnight. Instead I think that Bush's partner in crime, the UK, is the driving force behind Iran's sudden "Green Revolution."


The history of animosity between Great Britain and Iran is so long it would be impossible to detail it all here. The current round of problems began in 1941 with the Anglo-Russian invasion of Iran. Here the British, for reasons known only to them, decided that all of Iran's oil belonged to Britain. During the course of this invasion and ensuing occupation Iran's Reza Shah was deposed and during a period of British rule was replaced by his son Mohammed Reza Shah. In 1951 the Shah was replaced by the popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq who brought the Iranian oil industry back under Iranian control cutting off Britain's oil supply. At first Britain responded to this by enforcing an economic blockade or sanctions against Iran. After two years this had failed to undermine Iran's democratic government so Britain's MI6 took a more direct approach by instigating an uprising that saw Prime Minister Mosaddeq deposed and the power of the Shah reinstated. This 1953 operation is known as Operation Ajax and was spearheaded by the BBC.

With the Shah back in power and Britain's supply of cheap oil secured the sanctions against Iran ended and tensions between the two countries cooled throughout the 1950's and 1960's. Then in the 1970's economic problems led to 1979's Islamic Revolution in which Mohammed Reza Shah was again deposed. Aside from disrupting Britain's cheap oil supply the Islamic Revolution caused Great Britain something of a constitutional problem. Iran had became a theocracy with a Supreme Leader anointed by God to rule over the population. Great Britain is also something of a theocracy with a Monarch anointed by God to rule over the rest of humanity. Obviously you can't have two different people claiming to have been anointed by two different Gods to rule otherwise it makes the whole system of governance look a bit silly. Besides no Monarch is ever going to be friends with people who depose Monarchs.


Again Great Britain reacted swiftly against Iran introducing sanctions against the new government. When this again failed Britain began funding and arming a regional ally called Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq. By 1980 they had convinced Hussein to invade his neighbour Iran leading to an eight year war that kept the Iranian government on the defensive and did great damage to Iran's economy. By the time this war ended in 1988 Britain's North Sea oil supply was up and running, the Cold War had ended in the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and Britain was too busy carving up Eastern Europe into bite sized to chunks to cause further trouble with Iran.


This tense peace ended on September 11th 2001 when Al Queada attacked the USA as a response to America's unwavering support for the Israeli's war against the Arab world. As the US President at the time was a fool he responded to the attack by intensifying his support for Israel, invading Iraq and Afghanistan on their behalf. Great Britain leapt to the support of this little adventure because the religious text that allows the Queen of England to sit on the throne is the same religious text allows Jewish people to lay claim to Israel as their homeland. Plus it gave the British to opportunity to secure some cheap oil and settle old scores with the Iraqis and Iranians. This Global War on Terror put Britain and Iran in direct confrontation again and led to a series of events in which the Iranian government was able to humiliate the British on numerous occasions;

• Either real or imagined the UK firmly believes that Iran has been killing British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such they consider the entire population of Iran to be part of the Taliban and think the two countries are already at war.
  

• Iran's nuclear program along with it's support for Hezbollah and Hamas make Israel believe that Iran is at war with the country. For the reasons explained above Britain consider any opposition to Israel to be a direct attack on the British Monarchy.

• In 2006 a group of British Sailors and Marines strayed into Iranian waters and were taken prisoner by the Iranians. Aside from the humiliating fact that the once great Royal Navy were longer able to navigate the waves let alone rule them Britain's embarrassment was compounded by the fact it needed the Iranian's to walk British intelligence through the negotiations that brought the situation to a peaceful resolution.

• Between 2006 and 2007 British bank, Lloyds TSB, helped the Iranians break international sanctions by laundering cash. Far from being an act of friendship this was a MI6 intelligence gathering operation to find out not only where Iranian assets were being hidden but who was hiding them and how the entire laundering operation worked. Being a British operation this started going so badly wrong that the CIA were forced to shut it down with a court case that cost Lloyds TSB a lot of money and further bruised MI6's already fragile ego.

• Since 2006 Lebanon war Britain's elected Labour party expended a lot of effort trying to get the political ally Tzipi Livni elected as Israeli Prime Minister. When this failed in 2009 the apparent attempt to influence the Israeli election severely strained relations between Israel and Great Britain. Creating problems for Iran, Israel's favourite enemy, and being seen to do so is a very good way for Britain to repair that fractured diplomatic relationship.

At this point I would normally round off this post with some neat explanation of why Britain is trying to stir up unrest in Iran but unfortunately they just seem to be doing out of some strange mix of religious fervour and historical egotism. The combination of historical animosity between the two countries though and the extreme methods that the BBC/Foreign Office's Persian Service are using to make sure that the British perspective of the protests is foisted onto the Iranian population leave me in no doubt that Britain is keen for the unrest to go on as long a possible.

Faced with this sort of espionage attack on their country the Iranian authorities are running out of options and I'm worried that the Iranian protesters will soon become martyrs to nothing but their own stupidity.