French diplomats attacked in Tehran

The Islamic Republic never misses an opportunity to remind people who is in charge. “On Sunday evening, two officials from the French embassy in Iran were subjected to an extremely serious act of intimidation by the Iranian security services, in flagrant violation of the diplomatic immunities they enjoy,” said the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse. The two diplomats were “detained without cause for several hours, interrogated and, in one case, beaten” before they were able to reach the French embassy. They will return to France in the coming hours, added the Foreign Minister, who expressed to them “his support and full solidarity for the ordeal they have endured”. “This attack is all the more shocking given that these two officials are carrying out our programmes to support civil society, and in particular Iranian artists and scientists. This extremely serious and unacceptable violation of our officials’ personal integrity cannot go unpunished.”

True words, but they are destined to remain just that unless they are backed up by action. The Islamic Republic’s war against the West began with the taking of American hostages at the embassy in Tehran, holding 52 US citizens hostage for 444 days. We will not be granted safe passage, however hard we try to appease the regime. No more major hostage-takings, but small, calculated humiliations: a way of testing the West’s nerves and demonstrating that theocratic sovereignty is worth more than any Vienna Convention, whilst reiterating that any bridge extended towards Iran and built on a grand, consolatory deception is merely another noose with which the regime can strangle us.