A Thousand-Year Padlock for the UK Embassy?
By: Sergei Barseghian
Thirty-six years ago, concerned with the prospect of Shah’s return and the repetition of the 1953 coup, young revolutionary students planned to conquer the US embassy in Tehran. They did not consider then a student leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s objection who was alternatively seeking the conquest of the Soviet embassy in Tehran. With their close cleric allies, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in Mecca at the time, they asked another ally, Ayatollah Seyed Mohammad Mousavi Kho’iniha to seek Ayatollah Khomeini’s idea about their plan. He informed Ayatollah Khomeini only after the incident, and immediately heard his message via Ahmad Khomeini: “You have taken a good place. Do not let it go!”
After the end of the 444-dayshostage crisis, the embassy was locked and left empty. Right after his appointment as the Minister of the Revolutionary Guards’ Affairs, Mohsen Rafiqdoust planned to convert the embassy into a ministry building, but Ayatollah Khomeini told him: “Why are going there? Are we supposed not to have diplomatic relations with the US for a thousand years?”
The embassy building was left without an ambassador and diplomat. Later, it was converted into a museum and the gathering center for the Student Day ceremony. Eight years ago, a rumor came up when a Cyprus-resident Iranian businessman got a verdict on selling the embassy to receive a 550 million dollars indemnity for his kidnapping. Iran’s judiciary officials soon reacted and rejected any bid for selling the embassy building. They also put emphasis that according to the international laws, embassies could not sold out. It would be also against Iran’s domestic laws, and would taint Iran’s international image as well.
Obviously, the embassy would remain as it had been. Even if the embassy reopens –a scenario that is not ‘impossible’ as Hashemi Rafsanjani recently noted, it would be possible that the American diplomats change the venue of the embassy. Three months ago, a tour guide of the US embassy-museum told a British journalist that he would not be worried of leaving his job under any drastic shift in the US-Iran relation. He may be right, since the US embassies are typically located in remote parts of the cities, not in crowded central districts which could serve as a perfect place for the protestors. The US embassy in Tehran was originally located on the margins of the Tehran, before the city sprawled and swallowed in the embassy. The return of US diplomats to a closely-watched embassy would be hardly possible.
Thirty two years after the conquest of the US embassy, a new generation of students planned to conquer the UK embassy. This time, nobody was informed. Some of the students were even unaware of the place which was supposed to be conquered. According to one of the group, a student named Hamid Darwishi Shahkolai, those who went to conquer the UK embassy residence in the Qolhak district got on the bus to attend a benign gathering and mourning ceremony. Later, when they reached Shariati Street they found out that they were going for the “conquest of the Qolhak Garden”. After ten seconds, the first student mounted the gate, and after one minute, the gate was opened. Students entered the garden and dragged down the UK flag. In the middle of room-by-room search, nobody stole expensive items according to Darwishi Shahkolai, since the building was ‘usurped’, “but everything was there, valuable jewelries, alcoholic drinks, the original version of Harry Potter, and lurid movies and journals”.
According to his account, some of the students had gone to the British embassy in Ferdowsi Street as part of a smoke screen plan, while the other group entered the Qolhak Garden surprising the guards. But the main battle took place in the embassy. Hearing the news of conquest of the embassy another student reached the place, hearing a person announcing: “The order has come from top officials. We should discharge the place and leave”. But ignoring this call, he continued searching room by room and saw a number of occupiers in one room “eating dinner, honey with toasted bread”. He sums up the event: “we were deceived.” Three days later Assembly of Hezbollah Students issued a declaration and criticized the invasion: “This unconsidered move has put the government in a defensives position.”
The day after, the most senior official who supported this event was Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, who stated that this anger had been raised due to decades of Britain’s domineering attitude towards Iran. Even Hamid Rasaei, a hardliner parliamentary representative who was in front of the embassy that day could not defend this invasion, and sufficed to state that “my position is the position of the parliament; this event happened all in a sudden.” No political authorities supported this attack. Hours after the event, Ahmadinejad’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi condemned the occupation of diplomatic venues, and Seyed Ahmad Khatami, conservative cleric and Friday Prayers leader explicitly stated: “I am against invasions and the conquest of the embassies in the Islamic Republic. Having the revolutionary spirit does not imply that the embassies in Iran should feel insecure and this does not meet the state’s interests.”
The most explicit statement toward this invasion was declared by Ayatollah Khamenei in August 2001 in the presence of more than a thousand of academic elite and student activists: “In the recent occupation of that ‘evil’ embassy the youth’s feeling was justified, but their behavior was not correct.” Then police Chief Esmaeil Ahmadi Moqaddam also said: “when I met Ayatollah Khamenei he said it was a wrong act and it harmed us.”
After the attack, the UK government gave a 48 hour timeout to Iranian diplomats to leave London, and at the same time the UK’s foreign minister informed charge d’affaires of Iran that the British government requests compensation referring damages of the embassy. It was after this declaration that it was found out that reparations from, “conquering the fox’s den” as the attackers mentioned it, were not only the portraits of the Queen and or John Travolta and Samuel Jackson’s poster holding the gun in the Pulp Fiction movie -which the attackers showed off for the cameras like an important document. It turned out that in the midst of this invasion a two million dollar portrait of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar drawn by Mirza Ahmad in 1882 had been lost. No one had been interrogated or tried, neither for this invasion nor the loss of the precious portrait.
Considering these signs, it is obvious that the embassy would not continue its operations as before. Majid Takht Ravanchi, deputy foreign minister in Rouhani’s government, said that in the case of the British Embassy, it is not a matter of “indemnity”, but a matter of “damage compensation”. He contended that “we will pay for the damage but we do not make apology”. Attacking the embassy not only had no supporters in the system, but also faced the Supreme Leader’s reprehension. What the parliament members approved in 2011 was a downgrade in diplomatic relations with the UK, not closing the embassy. Their statement following the decision also noted that the foreign ministry would revert if London changed its policies.
So why were there objections when it was heard that the UK embassy would reopen with the attendance of its foreign minister? Why did some people remind others of Herat disintegration from Iran, D’Arcy agreement, Iran’s invasion in 1941, the 1953 coup or supporting Saddam’s regime in the eight-year war to show the reopening of UK embassy as illegal? Why do they call for keeping the embassy closed when the foreign ministry has been able to solve the issue? On top of that, was the embassy supposed to be closed? No plans were offered for permanent closure of the embassy and converting it into a museum by the protestors. The main mission of nonresidential officers in each country was to revise diplomatic relations and take temporary steps to reopen the embassies in Tehran and London. All their going back and forth resulted in reopening of the embassies. One need to reply to the opponents what Rafiqdoust had heard: “Are we supposed not to have diplomatic relations with the UK for a thousand years?”
Translated by: Parisa Farhadi