When it comes to British-Iranian relations, appeasement is the word of the day. How else to describe our abject failure to proscribe the Revolutionary Guards, close the Ayatollah’s London office or even expel the regime’s ambassador (who was interviewed on the BBC just last week)?
Sure, Shabana Mahmood took steps to ban the Al Quds march in London, but this was soon replaced with plans for a “static protest”. In what world was this supposed to be a win? The problem, Home Secretary, is that supporters of a murderous enemy of our society are militating in our capital city, not that they are walking along rather than standing still.
This impression of marshmallow softness was confirmed once again this week when pictures emerged of Foreign Office diplomats enjoying a reception at the Iranian embassy in London to mark the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which plunged the region into 47 years of bloodshed.
Astoundingly, it did not occur to any of these officials that cosying up to regime representatives while its thugs were butchering tens of thousands of innocent people back home might not be a good look. Diplomats mingled with Iranian representatives and nodded and clapped during speeches praising the revolution.
The Foreign Office is particularly vulnerable to such lapses of judgment. Partly, this is an occupational hazard: diplomats spend their lives swimming alongside foreign powers with whom we share little in the way of values, navigating carefully in the pursuit of our interests. But the line between diplomatic fingerspitzengefühl and appeasement is a fine one. After meddling in Iran throughout the 19th century and the start of the 20th, the following 50 years of British policy was shaped by a curious mixture of caution, cultural sympathy and diplomatic inertia. Add to this the more recent collapse in our national backbone and the rise of the cultural phenomenon I have come to call “Niceism”, and the establishment has often ended up accommodating and empathising with Tehran rather than confronting it.
That instinct has deep roots. Historically, British diplomacy in the Middle East has been shaped by a tradition of Arabists and Persianists who prided themselves on their cultural fluency and sympathy for the societies in which they worked. Some of Britain’s most celebrated imperial figures embodied this outlook. The most famous, of course, was TE Lawrence, whose romantic identification with Arab nationalism became part of the mythology of British engagement with the region (before he was killed in a motorcycle crash in Dorset in 1935).
In some ways, the influence of Lawrence can still be felt today. Within the Foreign Office, there remains a traditional attitude towards the Middle East that emphasises understanding and accommodation over assertiveness. Over the years, diplomats have frequently seen themselves as intermediaries between Western powers and Islamic societies rather than as hard-edged advocates of British strategic interests.
That mindset could be seen during the upheaval that led to the bastard birth of the Islamic Republic itself. In 1979, as the Shah’s regime collapsed and the revolution swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power, Western diplomats — including our own — realised they had badly misjudged the forces that would overthrow the Shah, as the British ambassador to Tehran at the time, Sir Anthony Parsons, later acknowledged in his memoirs. Yet the instinct to maintain engagement with the new regime remained intact.
In the decades that followed, British policy towards Iran oscillated between confrontation and engagement, but rarely questioned the assumption that dialogue was better than pressure. Even as Tehran developed a network of proxy militias across the Middle East, advanced its nuclear programme and suppressed domestic dissent, the Foreign Office generally favoured negotiation and diplomatic contact.
Failing to proscribe the Revolutionary Guards is a case in point. For years, the main opposition to the move has come from King Charles Street and rested on the argument that it would damage channels of communication between London and Tehran. In a conflict between diplomacy and national security, most of us would think it obvious to go with the latter. Not the Foreign Office.
Diplomacy, of course, does depend upon channels of communication, and Iran is too significant a regional power to ignore. But there comes a point when soft engagement looks less like hard-headed statecraft and more like institutional sympathy, and this only acts as a recruiting sergeant for those who aim to exploit us.
Which brings us back to the embassy reception. For the life of me, I have been unable to think of a single benefit afforded to Britain from this craven display of Niceism. From the point of view of Tehran, however, the benefits are obvious: at a time of butchery on the streets of Iran, and with the dogs of war barking in Washington and Jerusalem, the opportunity to launder the reputation of the regime and gain British support was seized with both hands.
Britain’s long history in the Middle East—stretching from the age of Lawrence of Arabia to the present day—has produced a diplomatic culture rich in regional knowledge. But knowledge should lead to clear-eyed realism, not sentimentalism.
Clearly, there is a potent strategic disadvantage to this softness. As we saw during the nuclear negotiations, Tehran’s leadership has long believed that Western governments are reluctant to escalate pressure. Every time British officials emphasise dialogue or overlook the regime’s behaviour, it reinforces that calculation to our cost.
For the sake of moral clarity, imagine viewing the party at the regime’s London embassy through the eyes of Iranian parents who have lost sons and daughters in the struggle for freedom. How must the sight of our civil servants raising their glasses to the Islamic Revolution have appeared to them? It is inexcusable. For all the emollience demanded of diplomacy, once officials lose their grip on our values, allies and interests, they have made themselves into agents of the other side.
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