Diplomatic manoeuvrings go on as London and EU partners ponder how best to respond to the Iranians’ bullying of British Embassy locally employed staff:

European Union governments summoned Iranian ambassadors to protest against the detentions.

An EU official told the BBC that, in addition, visas for Iranians holding Iranian diplomatic passports would be suspended.

The official said other measures, including the withdrawal of EU ambassadors from Iran, would be considered if the two staff members were not released.

A nice little example of Principles colliding with Real Life and with each other.

It is hard not to react to nasty official behaviour against your own staff. If you can’t look after them, you look weak.

How to react? Stepping up collective diplomatic pressure of the sort apparently envisaged sounds at least symbolically tough. But it has two problems:

  • whatever we and our partners do to inflict cost on Iran, the Iranian regime can do something worse in response to inflict cost on us
  • and once EU Ambassadors are withdrawn, then what? Is that move not making life awkward for our own diplomacy plus removing from Iran a number of senior Western experts who can keep an eye on what is happening? A bit like: "If you don’t release those two people, we’ll shoot ourselves firmly in the foot. We will, you know. We mean it!"

London wants an ‘effective European foreign policy’, involving coordinated action by all EU governments. But do our EU partners really want to get that entangled in spiteful Iranian moves against very junior British Embassy employees? Bigger fish to fry?

Sometimes the best thing to do with obvious childish provocations is, perhaps, studiously to avoid being provoked.