Embassy mob: ‘Death to England’

Published on Wednesday 30 November 2011 12:13

Hardline Iranian students have stormed Britain’s two diplomatic compounds in Tehran, lobbing petrol bombs, smashing windows and burning the Union Flag which they replaced with Iranian ones.

At the main British embassy compound in central Tehran, infiltrators hurled documents from the windows of offices and one protester made off with a portrait of the Queen.

As they stormed the building, rioters chanted “The embassy of Britain should be taken over” and “Death to England”.

Six employees were taken hostage at Britain’s other diplomatic facility several miles away but later freed by police, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Iranian media later reported the protests at both embassy compounds ended last night and all students had left the buildings. Britain expressed “outrage” at the most serious assault on foreign diplomatic missions in Iran in several years.

David Cameron called the Iranian government a “disgrace” for failing to protect the British embassy and its staff from surging protesters. The Prime Minister, who chaired a meeting of the Cobra security committee after the assault, demanded the attackers faced prosecution.

He said: “The failure of the Iranian government to defend British staff and property was a disgrace. Our immediate priority is the safety of our staff. I spoke to our ambassador this afternoon and was reassured that everyone has been accounted for.

Mr Cameron added that the government held “the Iranian government responsible for its unacceptable failure to protect diplomats in line with international law.”

Foreign Secretary William Hague also warned Iran it faced “serious consequences” over the attack.

The scheduled demonstrations were in protest against new sanctions imposed by London last week over Iran’s nuclear programme. In retaliation on Monday, Iran passed a law to expel the British ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, who took up the post only last month. Some 15 British nationals are stationed at the embassy.

They were confident yesterday morning that the protest would pass peacefully because scores of riot police had been deployed outside the main embassy compound.

But security forces apparently stood idly by when protesters swarmed over the gates, which are flanked by statues of a lion and unicorn. Only later did police expel rioters. Hundreds stood outside, lobbing stones over the high perimeter walls. One brandished a Union Flag daubed with a skull and bones.

Iranian state television broadcast live footage of the scenes which were reminiscent of the storming of the US embassy in 1979, when militant students held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The British embassy has come under attack on several occasions. In November 1978 – a year before the Islamic Revolution – the embassy was ransacked by a crowd angry at Britain’s support for the Shah of Iran.

The embassy was shut down three times in the following decade, re-opening in 1988.

A year later diplomatic ties were broken off again over the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, over his novel, The Satanic Verses. Ties were restored to ambassador level in 1998.

In the early 1980s, a narrow street flanking the embassy was renamed after the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. Taxi drivers still call it by its old name – Churchill Street.

It was at the embassy in November 1943 that Winston Churchill celebrated his 69th birthday. He was there with Stalin and Roosevelt to decide the date and magnitude of the Anglo-American invasion of Nazi-occupied France that was to be aided by a renewed Russian offensive.

In the late 1990s Britain spent £1.3 million renovating the embassy. The Rushdie affair had been resolved and there were high hopes for cordial Anglo-American relations.

A year earlier a moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, had been elected. He was a philosopher-politician who championed a “dialogue of civilisations”.

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