Tehran Protesters Storm British Embassy

The Guardian UK reports:

At 9:40 am EST, dozens of Iranian protesters have forced their way into the British embassy in Tehran, tearing down the Union flag and throwing documents from the windows.

Photo By Raheb Homavandi/Reuters.

The attack came two days after the Iranian parliament voted to expel the British ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, in retaliation against economic sanctions imposed by the west over the country’s disputed nuclear programme. The Foreign Office said it was “outraged” at the events and that they were “utterly unacceptable.”

Fars news agency reported on Tuesday that a small group of students chanting “death to England” had replaced the British flag with the Iranian Flag. British and Israeli flags were also reported to have been burnt during the protests. Another semi-official news agency, Ilna, said the protesters had “conquered” the embassy. The episode was shown live on state-run Press TV.

Around a thousand protesters gathered on the street in front of the embassy, waving pictures of the Iranian nuclear scientist, Majid Shahdirari, who was assassinated last November in Tehran. Others held pictures of another assassinated Iranian scientist, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, and a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Suleimani, who is said to be in charge of the group’s overseas operations.

State TV reported that another group of hardline students gathered at the gate of the British ambassador’s residence in northern Tehran, at the same time.

This event is taking place during a Mercury retrograde within the Sagittarius-Gemini eclipse window, which should at least give you pause to discern what is really happening, if it’s happening, and what IS it that’s truly happening — as should most any news story involving the trifecta of the US, the UK and Tehran. Despite the history of tense relations between the US and Iran, today’s situation gives me neither fear or alarm. Call it intuition, or call it years of being fed bullshit about our intentions in the Middle East, my eyes and ears are yet to believe what I’m seeing and hearing. Anyone want to take a guess as to what is occurring behind the scenes? — fb

9 thoughts on “Tehran Protesters Storm British Embassy”

  1. Alexander:

    Funny the perception games played by empires. In a matter of years, the editorial cartoons of the Filipinos evolved from “handsome indigenous people” to “mongrel natives” to human monkeys with over-exaggerated features (noses and lips). Since early 20th century America saw post-Reconstruction era blacks as undesirable, painting Filipinos to resemble caricatures of American blacks served the US jingoistic purposes. We fought America in a guerilla war in the early 1900s.

  2. At root, here is the theory:

    In order to control people you need to get them to think like you do. By this I mean echo one’s own mechanics of mental processing – which is in reality the most effective filter system known to humankind – the mass media give the penetration down to the individual level within contemporary settings; mass psychological engineering.

    Now consider whole cultures that don’t share your basic platform (especially equated with a huge and unifying world religion) – how much more difficult is it to control them?

    Let us take the time-honored distinction between the civilized and the barbarian. Even though the popular imagination is misled about the nature (and hence details) of that distinction (it was the ruthless Vikings, for example, who bequeathed to us westerners a system of representative government – toward the end of the first millennium CE) there is much historical evidence of the visceral fear felt by conquerors toward both potential and actual unruly subjects.

    If we take the Romans developing the Pax Romana – it is easier to rule by means of ‘peace’ (brutal or not) than warfare. Subjugate tribes and then get them to worship your gods. At points however, that theory goes to the wall. Especially once one fails to impose one’s ideology successfully, one faces guerilla warfare.

    So Hadrian was a good example with his 76 mile long wall of keeping the ‘barbarians’ out. A fear then grips one’s own cohort once one must defend because unable to conquer. Xenophobia then begins the process of propaganda propagation. Regarding the Celts, the Roman historian (3rd century CE) described the Picts (or painted people) as “naked and unshod, possess their women in common, and in common rear all the offspring… and they are very fond of plundering… For arms they have a shield and short spear, with a bronze apple attached to the end of the spear-shat, so that when it is shaken it may clash and terrify the enemy… They can endure hunger and cold and any kind of hardship; for they plunge into swamps and exist there for many days with only their heads above water, and in the forests they support themselves upon bark and roots.”

    Exaggerating this animalism was a fear-based strategy with a double-edge because it struggles to tame the monster that it has created within the human imagination. The visual of the Picts, with their painted bodies (like modern day tattoo horror), finds a clear parallel in modern notions of ‘unhinged Arabs with their finger on the nuclear button’ – this is all designed to prey on the human fear of annihilation. It also sneaks in the notions of contemporary forms of ‘democracy’ (or more precisely ‘democratic governance’ – remember the Vikings invented the first parliament!) which are really means of preventing power being manifested from a single source in a spontaneous moment of time. Which is all really to say that ‘not just anyone is licensed to use violence’ – nope, they must be authorized. If you are going to be using violence it can’t be of that pesky, *reactive* kind. No individual or small group will be organizing dissent and mobilizing counter-actions etc.

    This whole Iran agenda is on a surface level about saying chaos comes from resisting power, that power will operate unilaterally at all times (we’re allowed nuclear, you aren’t – because we’re civilized, whereas you are barbarian enough to resist our efforts in any way possible) and that there will be dire consequences for the world at large if we do not forcibly prevent these mad dogs (rendered insane in the midday sun) from parading the notion that ‘civilized’ and ‘democratic’ processes are in fact oppressive and evil; instead replacing such with volatile, reactive and unpredictable actions that could destabilize the world order at any moment….

    So.. It all comes back to ultimately imposing a form of law and order upon these states that will mean control imperatives are realized and more importantly, become sustainable and covert.

    You can’t have a bunch of people one day deciding they wish to change the social order and have any measure of true autonomy.

    The point is to be governed, not to govern.. unless you are *authorized*

    Didn’t you know? That’s just how the world IS.

  3. Thanks Fe, I was wondering about this today.

    Hmmm, the Basij? They do nothing spontaneously at all, not without permission from above. They were the ones beating the demonstrators so long ago and forcing them off the streets. Truly actors for the ayatollahs, they were used to clear the minefields in the Iran-Iraq war by simply running forward through the mines and being blown up.

    Theater of the absurd, indeed.

  4. This report is from Al Jazeera:

    Dozens of young Iranian men have entered buildings inside the British embassy as well as a diplomatic compound in Tehran, throwing rocks, petrol bombs and burning documents looted from the offices.

    The semi-official Fars news agency said that earlier in the day, security forces were trying to eject the protesters, who were a minority from a larger group staging an anti-UK demonstration outside the embassy.

    The agency referred to the protesters as students who were chanting “Death to America”, “Death to England” and “Death to Israel” among other slogans.

    Live TV pictures showed several of the people on top of the entry gate to the embassy, waving Islamic flags.

    One protester was seen waving a framed picture of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, apparently found inside the British offices.

    Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Tehran, said that the protesters, who were initially cleared out of the embassy, had entered the embassy grounds for a third time.

    The men said that they would not leave until they received direct orders to do so from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hossein Khamenei, said Jabbari.

    The British foreign ministry issued a statement saying it was “outraged” by the situation.

    “It is utterly unacceptable and we condemn it,” it said.

    Government-approved protest

    Our correspondent said that the police and various ministries had prior knowledge of the protest, which was organised by the student arm of the Basij armed group.

    “Any such action of this could scale can never be independent in the Islamic Republic,” said Jabbari.

    “These gatherings are always approved by higher officials.”

    In an appearance on state television on Sunday, Sardar Mohamad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the Basij, said that the unit was “counting the moments” until it could put an end to the “Zionist agenda.”

    Jabbari said a number of protesters had been taken into custody.

    The Fars news agency also reported that six British embassy workers were freed by Iranian security forces and turned over to UK government representatives.

    It later removed the story from its website.

    Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from London, said further talks will be held on the situation.

    He also said that according the British government, all UK embassy staff in Tehran and their families are accounted for.

    Simmons added that William Hague, the UK’s foreign minister, had said that “he wouldn’t describe a hostage situation, but that UK embassy staff were protected by Iranian police”.

    “He [Hague] was grateful for that but then held the government accountable once again for what had happened,” Simmons said.

    Iran’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it regretted the attack against the embassy, and that Tehran is committed to the safety of diplomats.

    Hague rejected the statement, saying that the UK held Iran responsible for “its failure to take adequate measures to protect our embassy, as it is required to do”.

    Rising tensions

    The incident followed Britain’s imposition of new sanctions on the Islamic state last week over its nuclear programme.

    London banned all UK financial institutions from doing business with their Iranian counterparts, including the Iran’s central bank, as part of a new wave of sanctions by Western countries.

    Hague spoke of a “robust” response to Iran’s move in reducing diplomatic ties with the UK when news of the protest outside the embassy in Tehran broke.

    Iran’s Guardian Council approved a bill on Monday to downgrade Iran’s ties with the UK, one day after the Iranian parliament approved the measure, compelling the government to expel the British ambassador in retaliation for the sanctions.

    In parliament in Tehran on Sunday, a politician had warned that Iranians angered by the sanctions could storm the British embassy as they did to the US mission in 1979.

    A statement, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said that the US condemned “in the strongest terms” the attack on the UK’s embassy.

    “Iran has a responsibility to protect the diplomatic missions present in its country and the personnel stationed at them,” said the statement.

  5. Fe:
    Thank you for opening my mind. If anyone knows theater when they see it, it would be you. As far as guessing what is really happening behind the scenes, that would entail making a lot of assumptions about who really wants what and strange bedfellows du jour. One casualty of being stimulated to see things differently (and thank you again for that) is a dearth of ready answers. It would appear that one thing all three governments (USA, British and Iranian) have in common is the phenomenon of disenfranchised people assembling to express their grievances and petition their government for change. Iran was one of the places it started (seems so long ago), and one of the places where the crackdown was particularly vicious.

  6. I used to be able to speak some key phrases in Farsi… Now, I’m a bit rusty..

    I think these cats are expressing their disagreement, before the scheisse comes down..

    ..I hope it’s good scheisse..

    We’re at the pass.. Here’s the river.. What do we do?

    ..Smiles all over the place…

    Jere

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