Global Issues; WMD - Curbing Iran’s ‘rogue’ tendencies

The ‘breaching’ of the British embassy in Tehran and subsequent withdrawal of the diplomatic mission tied with recents reports pointing to Iran intensifying their nuclear programme have once caste into sharp relief Iran’s ‘rogue’ tendencies and internatiojnal attempts to deal with Iran.

Two worthwile recent articles: 1. David Owen in the Telegraph: David Owen: If Britain stands firm, it may yet tame IranThe solution lies in selective sanctions – not being sucked into military conflict . It starts:In Iran, the hardline Islamists call Britain “the little Satan”. This is in contrast to the United States, which they call “the Great Satan”. To some extent, the attack on our Embassy in Tehran is part of that positioning: they see us as a serious enemy and think we deserve this deliberate action, because the UK along with the US and Canada has recently cut its banking links with Iran.

1. In the Guardian Lord Malloch Brown in Expelling Iran’s diplomats: a dangerous showdown argues that the real threat to British diplomacy in Iran is not losing an embassy, but being seen as a US proxy. He asserts:Iran’s preoccupation with its own security and relations with what it sees as the threats of the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia have always offered the prospect of a wider canvas on which to provide guarantees against outside interference, in return for curbing Iran’s nuclear and conventional armament programme. The real value of a more imaginative diplomacy of this kind would have been to remove the prop that has kept this unpopular regime going: the threat of foreign intervention.