Let's be bold about Iran....

Now is the time for some aggressive moves....

Our government has done its best to keep out of trouble in Iran’s post-election turmoil, but the ruling theocracy is intent on forcing Britain into a fight. Ahmad Jannati, the radical cleric who heads the Guardians Council which oversaw the sham election and a top aide to supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday that some local British embassy staff would be put on trial for alleged involvement in the violence that erupted following the 12 June poll.

If Iran thinks it can hoodwink its people and the international community by bullying Britain into accepting responsibility for the domestic crisis on the mullahs’ plates, then Whitehall needs to show Tehran some serious teeth.

In the past three weeks since Iranian authorities began to crack down on nationwide anti-government protests, Tehran has expelled two of our diplomats and arrested nine others. It expelled the BBC’s correspondent after accusing him of conspiring to kill Iran’s pro-democracy activists to stoke unrest. Supreme leader Khamenei has urged vigilance against “evil Britain” and his hard-line followers have on at least one occasion threatened a repeat of the US hostage crisis this time against our diplomatic staff.

The mullahs are masters of deception. Somehow they managed to turn international furore over their brutal crackdown on the young inconsolable population into a row with Britain over its “meddling” in Iran’s internal affairs.

Iran’s apologists point to the unjustifiable British-inspired coup against the democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq 55 years ago as justification for Iranian mistrust and fixation on Britain.

But what has that tragic episode got to do with events in Iran today?

Today the mullahs are using brute force to suppress the Iranian people and deny them the right to choose their own future – one that would be far more to the interest of the international community as well. The regime uses the false pretence of foreign interference to change the equation of people vs. the theocracy to Iran vs. the West.

It uses countries it perceives as weak as a scapegoat. The government’s initial measured response to the suppression inside Iran and its history of inaction in previous years when Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped our sailors made it a good target.

But Iran’s aggressive provocations do not stem from its strength - to the contrary they are an attempt to conceal the regime’s instability.

The people of Iran have come to the streets in their millions demanding an end to the theocratic dictatorship in its entirety. In daytime the people chant “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei”. At nights they chant “God is great” from their rooftops, reminiscent of the protests the generation before them embarked on to topple the Shah’s dictatorship. Revolutionary Guards are attacking houses from where the divine calls are heard, exposing the mullahs’ false premise to moral and religious authority.

The people of Iran, simmering with anger and hope, have demonstrated to the world that the regime that governs Iran is illegitimate. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary David Miliband should vow not to recognise the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranian Resistance leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi has urged Britain and the West to align themselves with the millions demanding freedom instead of the mullahs denying them this right. Like some other EU leaders, Mr Brown should call for new UN-supervised elections in Iran based on popular sovereignty and not the supreme rule of the mullahs.

So send a message of firmnesses to Tehran. We should withdraw all diplomatic staff and ban visits by the regime’s leaders to the UK. We should impose tough sanctions until the regime halts suppression of its people. Finally we should urge the UN Security Council to set up an international tribunal to investigate the crimes of the regime’s leaders, including the 200 or so reported murders of pro-democracy activists in recent weeks.