Stephen Robinson in the Evening Standard looks at the Iranian Embassy in London and the capacious UK Embassy in Tehran, with a rather gloomy assessment of the current Iranian Ambassador:

Shortly after Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory, Hossein Adeli was recalled and replaced with His Excellency Rasoul Movahedian Attar, who the Foreign Office have found largely useless in their dealings.

He is regarded in Whitehall as the dullest regime hack, who is unable to smooth things over because he is so absolutely in thrall to Tehran.

When summoned to the Foreign Office for ritual dressing downs, he takes his punishment but seems unable to offer any solutions.

Nor does he speak to the wider British public at this time of crisis in his homeland, possibly because, it is said, he has yet to master English three years into his tour. It is no surprise, therefore, that the embassy’s annual party has become one of the coldest tickets on the diplomatic circuit, and not just because only tepid soft drinks are served.

Phone calls and emails to the embassy staff have gone unanswered since the crisis in Iran flared, and queries have been referred to a government website in Tehran.

We UK diplomats have never experienced the British government facing the sort of domestic protests which the ruling caste in Tehran now face. Nonetheless, when the domestic political situation gets difficult in our system the diplomatic machine tends to slow down as people at all levels wait for Ministers to resume concentration on their jobs, not on their own survival.

So I can imagine that the Iranian formal diplomatic machine will be close to grinding to a halt, with people back at HQ uncertain as to what instructions to send and people at their Embassies unwilling to use any initiative in case their moves are held against them by whoever comes out on top.

But the extremist secret police network will be alive and well, keeping an eye and reporting faithfully on colleagues within Iran’s diplomatic missions and on what local Iranian ex-pat opinion is doing and saying.

The article also starts:

It was the sort of response that shows the other side holds all the cards. "Unacceptable," said the Foreign Secretary of the Iranian government’s arrest over the weekend of up to nine locally hired Iranian staff working at the British embassy in Tehran.

Personally I dislike the sort of metaphor which says that in a case like this “the other side holds all the cards” This gives the impression that (a) we are in a game of some sort, (b) involving luck and/or skill.

In this case there are few rules, and it takes no skill on the part of some or other nasty creature in the Iranian system to beat up on some local Embassy employees to show just how tough they really are.