Britain’s relationship with Iran has a fraught, unedifying history, dating back to the 18th-century imperial tussle between England, Napoleonic France, and tsarist Russia for control of Persia. Iranians have long memories. To this day, they blame the UK for many of their woes. Britain invaded in 1941 to limit Nazi influence and protect the Anglo-Persian company’s oilfields. In 1953 it intervened again, mounting a coup, with US help, to overthrow a democratically elected government and bolster the rule of the autocratic, pro-western shah. Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, and US embassy siege, produced a rift that has never fully mended. The US and Iran still have no formal diplomatic ties. Hardliners view the UK’s opulent embassy and gardens in central Tehran as symbols of centuries of national humiliation. Whether that embassy is closed, and Britain’s ambassador recalled, is one of the decisions now facing Rishi Sunak and foreign secretary James Cleverly in the wake of Saturday’s execution of Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual national accused of spying. The Foreign Office has argued over the years that despite Iran’s often egregious behaviour, it is better to keep lines of communication open. This approach supposedly helped secure the release last year of aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, another dual national. But the regime, dominated by clerical hardliners, appears increasingly impervious both to quiet diplomacy and more forceful, public measures such as sanctions. Sunak and Cleverly’s ill-judged, culturally insulting condemnation of the regime as “barbaric” will further raise tensions.
Rather than making Britain sound strong and resolute, Cleverly’s choice of language smacks of powerlessness. Former Tory foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd and Lord Carrington would not have been so clumsy. But standards have fallen a lot since their time. What can the government realistically do? It could suspend diplomatic relations and send Iran’s London-based diplomats packing – and probably it should, at least for a while. It can impose yet more sanctions, proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and complain to the UN. Yet if it truly wants to punish the mullahs, Britain will need American help. Countering the threats and challenges presented by Iran is an increasingly urgent issue for all the western democracies, as this newspaper pointed out last week. A tougher stance will require the US to take a lead. Trouble is, Joe Biden has other worries – and he doesn’t much listen to this government.