The announcement by the head of Iran’s guardian council that locally employed British embassy staff in Tehran are to be put on trial plunges UK-Iran relations to a level possibly even lower than when British sailors were captured and accused of infringing Iranian territorial waters back in 2007.
Back then President Ahmadinejad let the sailors go with a pardon, despite their on-camera “confessions”, apparently obtained under duress.
But this is very different. Not only are the two accused Iranian nationals, but the notion that Britain is the hidden hand behind Iran’s current political turmoil comes from Iran’s supreme leader himself, in a speech on 19 June.
In other words, these embassy employees, unidentified but probably junior translators in the embassy press section, are in a great deal of trouble because their discomfort may well be part of official policy to convince ordinary Iranians that their woes are all Britain’s fault.
False, flawed or forced confessions are deeply rooted in the Iranian political system. These confessions are now being used as part of the regime’s cover story for the past few weeks of internal unrest, and as such they are unlikely to be overturned.
We may now be very close to the point when Britain feels it has no choice but to recall its ambassador. For now, London is holding off, seeking “clarification” from Tehran which it is very unlikely to receive on a Friday, the beginning of Iran’s weekend.
David Miliband says he spoke to his Iranian counterpart a few days ago. Whether he can get through to him today may not matter much anyway, given Mr Mottaki’s questionable authority within the regime’s complex hierarchy – and the time it takes for Iran’s Foreign Ministry to get the rest of the regime’s attention, from the clerics on down.
And there are still question marks over whether the rest of the EU is prepared to recall its envoys too, in response to British calls for a “robust” response.