UK ponders response to embassy raidPonders? Here's an idea for anyone down the Foreign office, if they care to listen: Take a page out of the old Soviet play book and tell the Iranians what Brezhnev told the Iranian ambassador after he was invited (i.e. frogmarched in his jammies between two large KGB agents) to a meeting at the Kremlin in 1979 after the American embassy fell (I paraphrase, but he wasn't kidding). "Students? *&$%! I know it was you and if our embassy is touched, I will vapourise Tehran."
Nobody touched it.
Soviet subtlety is sometimes the way to go.
ReplyDeleteAlso the traditional British method. A century ago, such a stunt on the part of the Persian government would have resulted in a battleship squadron coming through the Strait of Hormuz, pulling up just off a few selected ports, and swinging their guns around. Followed by a diplomatic note to the effect of, "Exactly how fond are you of your port facilities?"
ReplyDeleteNothing says "we are not amused" quite like heavy naval guns. Especially when the gunners start pressing the big red buttons marked FIRE.
cheers
eon
Of course, given the previous post, the British response would be not much more than name-calling and the tossing of rotten vegetables....
ReplyDeleteI am also put in mind of Sir Charles Napier's reputed response to a Hindu official who was defending the practice of "sati":
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
Needless to say, the practice of sati was soon ended.