AFP Photo
Kourosh Ziabari – Medium: Four people stormed the Iranian Embassy in London on Friday, 9th March and took down the Islamic Republic’s flag to give the Iranian government authorities ammunition for the escalation of tensions with the UK at a time the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is hindering the smooth and unhindered progress of bilateral relations. The attackers were arrested by the London Metropolitan Police “on suspicion of causing criminal damage and being unlawfully on diplomatic premises”. The attack was intrinsically condemned by Iran’s Foreign Ministry, and some hardliners in Tehran suggested that there is a case of negligence against the UK Police. No evidence to back up this allegation has been provided.
As a national of Iran, seeing my country’s embassy in the UK being ransacked is of course unpromising. And it’s morally and legally unacceptable. However, I vividly remember that day an angry mob assaulted the British Embassy in Tehran, imposing a massive financial and material damage on the UK government’s protected premises in the Iranian capital and inflicting a hardly reparable damage on the nation’s international image, foreign relations and its ability to integrate with the international community efficiently; something that happened in exactly the same fashion the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 took place: a group of “revolutionary” students ambitiously dreaming of making their country independent, in their own wording, kicked the Americans out, instructed to them by some “prudent and pious” trailblazers and helped them to run everything proudly indigenously, not knowing that they were being misled by the Soviets who didn’t necessarily have or had the best interests of Iranian citizens at heart or liked them altruistically.
Attacking the British embassy in Tehran has given birth to many thought-provoking questions about the sensibility and mental health of the people who launched the raid, the intention of its patrons and those who endorsed the attacks and those who should have prevented that incident when they were aware it was about to happen, and didn’t take action duly and finally condoned it. In the case of the 2011 attack on the British Embassy in Iran, it was quite clear that the law enforcement authorities and the Ministry of Interior didn’t do their job the way they were supposed to do. Ahmadinejad administration was apparently not moved by that horrific incursion and didn’t react in any way. Irresponsible and nonchalant decision-makers are always such.
Add to that rumors about the then President Ahmadinejad having encouraged that mob; basically, many of those raiders were said to be Ahmadinejad sympathizers, implicitly encouraged by himself or his entourage to take over the embassy and create another foreign policy mess.
Attacking foreign embassies, bringing down flags and tearing them apart, desecrating the images of dignitaries and imposing damage on the buildings that are the property of other countries and setting them alight is inconsistent with the spirit of international law and contradicts the principles of Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
There are also questions and terms not expressly regulated by this Convention, but are covered by the rules of customary international law, safeguarding foreign embassies and their staff and diplomats as individuals entitled to special protection and safety.
Following the hostage crisis of 1979 in which 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days in what is today referred to as the “Den of Espionage” , the assaultby that mob on the British Embassy’s compound in Tehran was the second largest and most tragic way a group of unhappy, apparently jobless and irritated people, who were stubbornly resistant to logic and reason, depicted another misleading and fallacious picture of Iran, obfuscated the Iran-UK ties further and added new figures to the statistics of bad days between the world’s sixth economic power and a government, which is still in the process of integration and development after a fundamental sociopolitical transformation that happened in 1979: the Islamic Revolution, which regardless of its achievements and victories, pushed Iran’s foreign policy at least a couple of decades back. And headlines and news stories emerging from outlets ranging from Reuters, The Guardian and The Independent to New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today mean no evidence is needed to substantiate this relegation.
Iran and the UK never had colonial relationships in the real sense of the word. Of course the political, economic and social superiority of the UK as a member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the Group of Eight (G8) and a founding member of the European Union makes it entitled to look down on many countries: Iran can be one of those countries, and in many major global decision-makings, UK, France, Germany and the United States think and act in unanimity and similarly, which means the result is against these countries that are a bit ambitious but cannot team up and secure international support: winning 32 votes in its bid for temporary membership of the UN Security Council in 2009 is only one instance. These figures and states are clearly teaching Iran’s leaders that they should forget about starting their every day with a disadvantage and make Iran a better place to live and other countries more willing to work with Iran, which the Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says is the safest and most business-friendly nation in the region.
And the attack on the British Embassy was not the last instance of those random people, “starting at a disadvantage” and doing things that makes the average Iranian embarrassed and the international community resentful and perplexed. In 2016, the Saudi diplomatic mission in Iran was set on fire and vandalized by a crowd of protesters, who stormed the embassy in Tehran and the consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad. They carried out that heinous project before the eyes of security staff and Iran’s police forces. The riots and arson attacks resulted in a rupture of Riyadh-Tehran relations and Sudan, Bahrain, Djibouti, the Comoros and Somalia severed diplomatic ties, and a new standoff between Iran and a number of Arab countries emerged. It goes without saying that Iran might have made a similar decision, had a thing of the same extent happened to the Syrian Embassy in Berlin! It’s a matter of shared and common interests and sometimes those political realities that the average citizen doesn’t clearly relate to.
However, although attacking, assaulting and damaging embassies to win diplomatic advantages, as explained in different ways by the international bodies and organisations, must become a “redline” that nobody should dare cross this easily and conveniently, because it’s not the way diplomacy, engagement and international law works, Iranian authorities shouldn’t be surprised or get perplexed by seeing sporadic attacks against the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic missions abroad: In 1992, the Iranian embassy in Ottawa, Canada was attacked; Iranian embassy in Sweden was vandalized and damaged in 2009; in 1998, the Iranian consulate in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul was assaulted and 11 people, including a distinguished journalist were killed, and other incidents and happenings of similar extent. However, the “fanatic” capital-dwellers in Iran’s most industrially-advanced, populous, disorderly, inconsistent, splendid and fancy city, which sometimes bases its next-week living agenda on what the Friday Prayers leader preaches in his sermons, didn’t shy away from retaliating those attacks.
The British embassy raid was one of the most painful and embarrassing responses that the mob gave to the international community for its unwillingness to pay a small group in the Iranian government lip-service for their insistence on the usefulness of a nuclear program, which is said is going to be used for producing Nano-medicine and helping with agriculture.
Such raids on embassies and making it a pattern that people with demands, whether legitimate or illegitimate, should feel free to violate international rules and regulations, go from this diplomatic mission to another and beg respect and extract “bonus” should become a bygone: a thing of the past that will not be tolerated by anybody. We cannot attack, blackmail respect and expect kindness and smiles!
But if these actions are not being criminalized and responded to categorically, then it is completely natural and unavoidable that thousands of hours will be squandered on unnecessary paperwork and intensive negotiations so that a childish action with a significant ripple effect is compensated.
The attack on the Iranian Embassy in London was despicable and those responsible should be held to account. However, as an Iranian citizen, I still think that endorsing interference in the internal affairs of other countries will give those countries reason to deal with Iran lopsidedly. Attacking embassies is indefensible and justifying such attacks is defending the indefensible. Iranian authorities should have the courage to extend apologies when things of this unusual magnitude happen and then they can definitely expect apologies and reparation when things of a very smaller scale happen. There’s only a slight difference: those who raided the British Embassy in Tehran had the unconditional backing of certain people in power. Those who attacked the Iranian Embassy in London were not funded, endorsed by or linked to the UK government.
This article was originally published by Medium