A one off, or the first of many?

An obscure but intriguing crack in the Iranian establishment – the resignation in Oslo, of the Islamic Republic’s Consul General in the city – Mohamad Reiza Heydari.

Norwegian Radio (NRK) reports the Consul General as saying he was resigning ‘over the Government’s treatment of protesters in Tehran during Christmas’. At least eight protesters were shot dead on the streets on what was the Shi’ite faith’s holiest day of Ashura. Mr Heydari and his family are reportedly applying for asylum in Norway.

Mr Heydari has been in post for three years – Iran’s diplomats tend to be moved roughly every three years. My hunch is that he may have been due to go home about now and decided to make the biggest leap a diplomat can make. It was at first reported that the Iranian Ambassador had resigned.

There has been a corruption scandal raging between the Norwegian oil Company Statoil and the Iranian government involving former President Rafsanjani’s son. And there are references on opposition Iranian websites to the ‘former ambassador and defector’, as if he too went at an earlier stage, but I’m unable to confirm it.

Nevertheless this is an unusual event and reminiscent of the first cracks in the Eastern European communist regimes which suffered similar diplomatic defections as the Iron Curtain began to totter.

Mr Heydari would not have secured such a prestigious European posting had he not been regarded in Tehran as a ‘trusty’. So his defection is bound to be seen as troubling for the Iranian regime. One diplomatic ‘swallow’ doesn’t signal a revolutionary spring, but it is worth noting.