Deeply held suspicion of Britain has roots in Revolution

Published on Friday 19 June 2009 21:51

IT IS no surprise that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, put the "evil British government" at the top of his list of western powers he accuses of fomenting the biggest street demonstrations to take place in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Britain has also been a convenient scapegoat and whipping boy for Iranian leaders when things go wrong at home. According to an old Persian proverb, if you trip over a pebble, you can be sure it was put there by an Englishman.

In the tumultuous prelude to the revolution, the late Ayatollah Khomeini was convinced that the BBC was supporting the US-backed Shah. The monarch, in turn, had little doubt the BBC was helping London to destabilise his regime by broadcasting everything Khomeini said from exile in France.

Three decades on, and many Iranians still see Britain as "perfidious Albion", a scheming "little Satan" that pulls the strings of the "Great Satan", America, which is viewed as a superpower with more brawn but fewer brains than its "duplicitous" Anglo-Saxon ally.

Such flattering perceptions of British power are little consolation to British diplomats in Tehran, whose embassy has been the frequent target of anti-British demonstrations over the years, some of them violent.

A street flanking the embassy was renamed Bobby Sands in the 1980s, after the IRA hunger striker, although a new road sign spells it as "Babi Sandz".

Most Iranian taxi drivers still use its original name, Churchill Street, which honoured Britain's wartime leader, who celebrated his 69th birthday at the embassy in November 1943.

Britons, bemused by the deeply held Iranian suspicion of their country, usually have no idea of its historical roots. Iranians are steeped in the history of British imperial meddling in Iran in the 19th and 20th centuries. The defining moment was in 1953 when British intelligence joined with its American counterpart in a coup that overthrew Iran's popular, elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the unpopular Shah.

To those few Britons who know of the coup, the episode might seem like ancient history – but it is foremost in the minds of most Iranians, who still view Britain as a great power.

Nevertheless, in a canny move to keep viewers from tuning in to opposition satellite channels beamed in from the US, Iran's state-run television has been broadcasting live action from England's Premier League. It is a huge hit.