Gulf 15: the view from Tehran

Iranians distrust the British –
and nothing has changed, writes
iason athanasiadis from Tehran

The US may be the Islamic Republic's Great Satan, but popular reaction to the freeing of the 15 Navy personnel reveals the man on the street here perceives Britain as a more formidable adversary.

On the Tehran-Qom highway, passengers in a shared taxi received news of the crew's release stoically. It was further evidence of both the reach of the British government and the extent to which it 'owns the mullahs', as one passenger put it.

"It's all a show," said Mohammad Saeedi, a seminary student. "England is behind this charade and is leading our clerics along. It's impossible that our government 'kidnapped' the sailors, because England is their master."

Britain's imperialist past and expert meddling in Iran's internal affairs - from the 19th century, the era of the Great Game, to the 1950s when M16 led the unseating of

London is the
old fox, and Washington merely its brawny, ignorant servant

Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq because he had upset London by nationalising the British-dominated oil industry - has left most ordinary Iranians nursing a distrust that endures well beyond the sunset of empire.

In the hardline lingo of the Islamic Republic, England is the 'old fox of imperialism' and Washington merely its brawny, slightly ignorant servant. Even the 1979 Revolution is explained away as a British plot, in which a modernising ruler (the Shah) was replaced by a backward-looking clerical oligarchy that promptly plunged a burgeoning regional power back in the Middle Ages.

Tehran spun the sailors' release as a show of Islamic compassion in the face of an old adversary. But Ahmadinejad's media coup turned to a PR disaster when the freed captives claimed back in England that they'd been subjected to psychological games.

Despite protestations the crew read from prepared scripts, analysts here believe that, internationally, Tehran is firmly back in Bush's 'axis of evil' - and with a new image of a manipulating extortionist to boot.