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The Iranian Government has you pegged.
This week, members of Iran's Islamic regime finally pinpointed the cause of mass protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in the days since a contentious presidential election.
It was not popular will, or angry opposition supporters who felt cheated, or even the Internet. No, according to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in an address to his ambassadors, it went like this: First, the British government secretly ordered British Airways to swap all its scheduled flights to Tehran with larger 747 jets, which it packed with hand-picked “passengers … with special intelligence and security ambitions,” who flooded into downtown Tehran, received orders from coded messages on the BBC's Persian-language network, and persuaded thousands of otherwise unwilling Iranians to protest.
Within Iran, this is the most widely accepted and popular explanation for the events that have threatened to tear the country in two this month: It was a British plot.
Iranians of a conservative bent have long believed, against all evidence to the contrary, that 10 Downing Street remains the secret “puppet master” behind everything that goes wrong in Tehran, from declining oil production to higher tomato prices.
Occasionally, Israel and the United States threaten to unseat Britain, which hasn't had a major role in Iran since the 1950s, as the sources of perfidy. The neighbouring Arab states, never fully trusted, get blamed, too. But since the June 12 election, the religious leadership and the Iranian state media have been climbing over themselves to declare a very British coup for the popular uprisings that erupted after the vote in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected by a 63 per cent margin, which supporters of reformist opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi say was fraudulent.
Tehran newspaper Aftab-e-Yazd said on Wednesday that Britain had used the election to renew its long-held imperial ambitions over Iran: “After the revolution, this wily fox's hands were tied but they tried to find some opening for their interference, which is how they are using Iran's elections and internal affairs today.”
It is rarely necessary for the word “Britain” to be uttered by Iranian politicians or journalists: The phrases “wily fox” or “puppet master” are universally understood identifiers, by a public who are broadly willing to believe that British wiles still stand behind Iran's troubles, six decades after London's imperial interest in Iran ended.
In prayers Friday, mullahs denounced Britain as “so malicious in the recent developments.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious and political leader of Iran's theocracy, denounced Britain last week as “the most evil” of international forces, eclipsing Israel and the United States to the point that the latter two rarely get mentioned any more.
It has now threatened to escalate into a full-scale diplomatic conflict, after Britain and Iran each expelled two diplomats and Iran expelled all British journalists from the country (along with many other foreigners).
The conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami (no relation to the former liberal reformist president with the same surname) denounced Britain Friday and called for harsh punishments, including death, for protesters he said had been agents of London. “In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously.”
In some ways, it is a fully understandable public obsession. Britain once had deep political and economic involvements in Iran, beginning with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century and lasting until the years after the Second World War.
There were some British interests behind the 1953 CIA-led coup that ousted the elected government and installed the shah of Iran: It was the company now known as British Petroleum that controlled the country's oil at the time (though it was not considered a valuable resource then).
But Britain quickly lost interest in Iran, bankrupted by the war and no longer able to maintain colonial adventures. In 1964, prime minister Harold Wilson formally ended any intelligence or large-scale diplomatic involvement there, which since then has been treated similarly to any other country.
But the launch last year of the BBC's Persian-language service – one of several foreign-language networks the independent public network runs – raised the ire of Iran's ruling elite, after it became apparent that large sections of the population were watching it.
After U.S. President Barack Obama, popular with Iranians, apologized for the CIA coup and avoided commenting on the election, the Supreme Leader and his loyal followers revived the old British-plot theory, and once again the Iranian media was filled with wily foxes this week. “President Ahmadinejad's worldview, largely supported by the Supreme Leader, is deeply antithetical and suspicious of the West,” says Ali Ansari, a leading scholar on Iranian politics based in Scotland. “But Britain, not America – whoever is in the White House – has been the target of their wrath.”
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Friday, Jun. 26, 2009
This week, members of Iran's Islamic regime finally pinpointed the cause of mass protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in the days since a contentious presidential election.
It was not popular will, or angry opposition supporters who felt cheated, or even the Internet. No, according to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in an address to his ambassadors, it went like this: First, the British government secretly ordered British Airways to swap all its scheduled flights to Tehran with larger 747 jets, which it packed with hand-picked “passengers … with special intelligence and security ambitions,” who flooded into downtown Tehran, received orders from coded messages on the BBC's Persian-language network, and persuaded thousands of otherwise unwilling Iranians to protest.
Within Iran, this is the most widely accepted and popular explanation for the events that have threatened to tear the country in two this month: It was a British plot.
Iranians of a conservative bent have long believed, against all evidence to the contrary, that 10 Downing Street remains the secret “puppet master” behind everything that goes wrong in Tehran, from declining oil production to higher tomato prices.
Occasionally, Israel and the United States threaten to unseat Britain, which hasn't had a major role in Iran since the 1950s, as the sources of perfidy. The neighbouring Arab states, never fully trusted, get blamed, too. But since the June 12 election, the religious leadership and the Iranian state media have been climbing over themselves to declare a very British coup for the popular uprisings that erupted after the vote in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected by a 63 per cent margin, which supporters of reformist opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi say was fraudulent.
Tehran newspaper Aftab-e-Yazd said on Wednesday that Britain had used the election to renew its long-held imperial ambitions over Iran: “After the revolution, this wily fox's hands were tied but they tried to find some opening for their interference, which is how they are using Iran's elections and internal affairs today.”
It is rarely necessary for the word “Britain” to be uttered by Iranian politicians or journalists: The phrases “wily fox” or “puppet master” are universally understood identifiers, by a public who are broadly willing to believe that British wiles still stand behind Iran's troubles, six decades after London's imperial interest in Iran ended.
In prayers Friday, mullahs denounced Britain as “so malicious in the recent developments.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious and political leader of Iran's theocracy, denounced Britain last week as “the most evil” of international forces, eclipsing Israel and the United States to the point that the latter two rarely get mentioned any more.
It has now threatened to escalate into a full-scale diplomatic conflict, after Britain and Iran each expelled two diplomats and Iran expelled all British journalists from the country (along with many other foreigners).
The conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami (no relation to the former liberal reformist president with the same surname) denounced Britain Friday and called for harsh punishments, including death, for protesters he said had been agents of London. “In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously.”
In some ways, it is a fully understandable public obsession. Britain once had deep political and economic involvements in Iran, beginning with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century and lasting until the years after the Second World War.
There were some British interests behind the 1953 CIA-led coup that ousted the elected government and installed the shah of Iran: It was the company now known as British Petroleum that controlled the country's oil at the time (though it was not considered a valuable resource then).
But Britain quickly lost interest in Iran, bankrupted by the war and no longer able to maintain colonial adventures. In 1964, prime minister Harold Wilson formally ended any intelligence or large-scale diplomatic involvement there, which since then has been treated similarly to any other country.
But the launch last year of the BBC's Persian-language service – one of several foreign-language networks the independent public network runs – raised the ire of Iran's ruling elite, after it became apparent that large sections of the population were watching it.
After U.S. President Barack Obama, popular with Iranians, apologized for the CIA coup and avoided commenting on the election, the Supreme Leader and his loyal followers revived the old British-plot theory, and once again the Iranian media was filled with wily foxes this week. “President Ahmadinejad's worldview, largely supported by the Supreme Leader, is deeply antithetical and suspicious of the West,” says Ali Ansari, a leading scholar on Iranian politics based in Scotland. “But Britain, not America – whoever is in the White House – has been the target of their wrath.”
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Friday, Jun. 26, 2009
. Its not like that !!!
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