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LONDON (BLOOMBERG) – The reopening of the British Embbady in Tehran was to mark the beginning of a new era in relations.
While the Union Jack flag was rising above the lush landscaped gardens of the complex in August 2015, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Philip Hammond said that the "Jack" flag was on the rise. event marked "a milestone".
It was just six weeks after the conclusion of an international agreement to restrict the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for easing the criminal sanctions that had strangled its economy. But since the agreement began to unravel last year, tensions between Britain and Iran have increased.
Then took place on Friday (July 19) the spectacular seizure of a UK-bound tanker in the Gulf, a ruthless response to the United Kingdom's detention of a vessel carrying Iranian oil through the Mediterranean Sea.
The UK has threatened Iran with "serious consequences", which could include a set of sanctions.
How have things become so bad? After all, the United Kingdom is part of a European trio that is trying to save the nuclear deal that US President Donald Trump pulled out of, causing his demise.
But it is also separating from the European Union and seeking a free trade agreement with the United States, which remains the dominant economy of the world.
THIS IS COMPLICATED
In short, its geopolitical priorities are complex.
Britain's relations with Iran go back to the 1600s and are marked by periods of conflict, some resolved fairly quickly and others that persist to this day.
For example, the Iranians still accuse Great Britain of a famine 100 years ago. All this underlies a feeling that the UK is playing a double game.
"Iranians are obsessed with the idea that the British are the archival manipulators in the background, manipulating the United States," said Dr. Ali Ansari, a professor of modern history in the Middle East to the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom.
"It dominates the story in a way you never imagined."
Great Britain, ravaged by Brexit, is grappling with a political crisis, pbading from one prime minister to another.
The two Conservative candidates competing for the leadership position are also at the same time both the current and the former Secretary of Foreign Affairs: MM. Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, who have the privilege of winning and Mr. Trump calls a friend.
Iran has never been a colony of the paper empire, but the United Kingdom has nevertheless exerted a disproportionate influence in the country over the centuries.
In the 19th century big game, when Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia competed for dominance in Central Asia, Persia found itself caught in the middle.
LIQUID GOLD
It has struggled to find a balance between the demands of the two imperial powers and, although Russia has always been the most brutal of the two, Britain has left deeper political traces.
This is partly because the events of the early 20th century "have altered the historical perspective," said Dr. Ansari.
Then, as now, these events revolved around oil.
In 1901, British entrepreneur William Knox D'Arcy began to look for oil in Persia and, under an agreement with the monarchy, he became the sole owner of the oil that he owned. 39, he would find, while Persia would receive only 16% of the total. annual profits and no word on how the company was managed.
The Anglo-Persian oil company was born seven years later when investigators from Mr. Arcy discovered crude oil in the southern desert.
"Fortune has earned us a fairyland award beyond our wildest dreams," said Winston Churchill, who was at the time in charge of the Navy and who oversaw his pbading of coal. to oil.
COLONIAL LUGGAGE
The British government injected new capital into society just before the First World War, acquired a majority stake in the capital, and built the world's largest refinery near the Persian Gulf, with the aim of treating oil and returning it. in Great Britain.
The company ran the city like a virtual colony: British employees and their families lived in luxury in an oasis of peace on one side of the city and non-British workers in a shantytown on the other.
Unsurprisingly, strikes and riots broke out sporadically. In 1951, as a wave of anticolonialism swept the region, the company was nationalized under the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Iran has canceled its right to extract oil and seized its badets. Britain closed its refineries, blocked Iranian ports and froze its Iranian bank accounts.
When it became clear that Mr Mosaddegh had the advantage, the United Kingdom lobbied the United States for them to install a sympathetic shah in the west. Together in 1953, they overthrew him during a coup d'etat.
BIRTH OF BP
Iranian oil began to flow again and the company – which was then called British Petroleum and now calls BP – tried to regain its former position.
But the Iranian public opinion was so fiercely opposed that the new government could not let that happen.
Instead, he was forced to agree to join a consortium of companies. After the exile of the repressive shah during the 1979 Islamic revolution, the anti-Western regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini nationalized the oil industry again.
The seizure of oil tanker carrying Iranian oil off the southern tip of Spain earlier this month, as the bulk of US policy towards Iran led by Mr. Trump, unified rival political factions.
It also gave the pillars of the Islamic Republic a new opportunity to attack Britain as an imperialist, colonialist and proconarchist power, determined to meddle in the affairs of Iran.
& # 39; PIRATES OF THE QUEEN & # 39;
On July 6 – two days after the British forced the seizure of a super oil tanker suspected of carrying Iranian oil to Syria – the Iranian media reacted quickly.
The moderate newspaper Arman headlined An American Scenario with British Actors, while the reformist Aftab spoke of extremism in Gibraltar.
The ultra-radical daily Kayhan called for retaliation against "the Queen's pirates".
The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, in which the United Kingdom backed Saddam Hussein, and a fatwa against the writer Salman Rushdie were among the weak points of relations between Iran and Great Britain. Britain.
More recently, the fate of dual Nazan-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – held by Iran since 1998 on charges of espionage – has poisoned the well.
She was recently transferred from the infamous Evin prison to a psychiatric hospital and is not allowed to contact her family.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Johnson was widely criticized for contributing to his fate by publicly saying that she was teaching journalism in Iran.
When he became Prime Minister, as expected, the crisis with Iran will require his immediate attention.
Just before Iran's extraordinary seizure of the oil tanker on Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it would not allow Britain's "evil" acts to go unanswered.
Such threatening rhetoric had already been used in 2011 in the run-up to the attack of the UK embbady in Tehran by extremists.
They left traces of scrawl on the walls bearing the inscription "Death to England", near the portrait of Queen Elizabeth and the bust of Queen Victoria.
Britain closed the embbady.
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