A reader writes re my posting on Locally Employed Embassy Staff: Yes, but you are rather glossing over the fact that a brutal regime can be far more brutal to its own nationals than it can to foreign diplomats. Indeed protection from brutality is the origin of the convention of […]
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 […]
The UK’s diplomatic problems with Iran have featured mutual expulsions of diplomats: Britain is to expel two Iranian diplomats as a tit-for-tat response after Iran forced the same number of British diplomats to leave, Gordon Brown revealed this afternoon. "It is with regret that I should inform the House that […]
I am tasked to prepare some ideas on the problems which may arise between civilian and military ‘cultures’ in trying to help fragile or failed states. See the Center for Global Development on the subject. The basic problem is that things are what they are. Fragile states are fragile, because […]
The BBC website picks up the musty tone of David Miliband’s recent speech on Europe in a headline which strongly suggests a direct quote from something or someone: Iran ‘must free UK Embassy staff’ The ensuing piece about an EU Foreign Ministers statement on the arrest by Iranian police of […]
A final thought on that David Miliband speech in Poland. It’s his use of the words ‘must’ and ‘need’. This is what he says the EU ‘must’ do. It must: adapt once again to the changing geopolitical context we face set itself a goal of creating a single, low-carbon, energy […]
Lib-Dem Mark Reckons reports on a significant discussion about new media trends in blogging/commenting and so on. Surely the point is that we are in a classic Long Tail scenario, where market conditions are driven by technological changes. Once upon a time the sheer cost of spreading news and views […]
An intriguing story (and a cross response) here. Basically, the USA has decided to press on with its new policy of inviting Iranian diplomats to the US 4th of July celebrations (US National Day equivalent) round the world, despite the grisly regime behaviour in Iran itself. As a gesture with a […]
Dan Hannan argues that Lord Mandelson’s manoeuvres to keep the Labour Party staggering on are all about Brussels, not about the UK interest or even the Labour Party’s own mistunes: So what the devil is he playing at? Viewed from the Westminster lobby, it seems an impenetrable mystery. From the […]
Sir Richard Dalton who served as HM Ambassador in Iran gives his view on the drama unfolding there: Despite how individuals may have voted – and notwithstanding brave acts of individual protest, such as resignations – the government apparatus, the parliament, the clergy, the commercial elite and most civil society […]
