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Iranian guests leaving a British embassy reception to mark the Queen’s official birthday have been harassed by radical students and security officials in a troubling sign of the mounting tensions with the West. The incidents on Thursday night followed other officially orchestrated attempts to intimidate Iranians with links to the West, whom some conservatives believe are trying to foment a “soft revolution” against the Islamic regime. At an earlier demonstration, radical student groups threw eggs, stones and paintballs at the embassy walls and tried to prevent guests entering the large compound in central Tehran.

They denounced “artists, politicians and disgusting Iranians and traitors” who planned to attend the event. Inside, several hundred of the 1,500 invited guests consumed canapés and fruit sherbets in the gardens behind the 19th-century residence. The Iranians included government officials, academics, artists, businessmen and representatives of non-government organisations. There were also foreign diplomats, journalists and members of Iran’s British community. A chamber orchestra played on the lawn as frogs croaked in the ornamental pond. As they left, Iranian guests were brazenly intimidated. A few were physically attacked by demonstrators. Unidentified photographers standing directly in front of the gates took a picture of everybody who left. There were several reports of arrests, police questioning and the confiscation of documents. Guests were eventually bused out by embassy staff. “Oh God, they’re taking photographs,” said a distinguished Iranian academic who reached the gates after inveighing against recent intimidation tactics. “And everything the Americans are doing is making this situation worse.” The daily Kayhan, whose editor is appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mohamed Khamenei, had earlier attacked the reception as a joint Anglo-American project in “psychological war”, that aimed to “break the taboo of Iranians communicating with foreigners”. Some invited guests said they had been warned not to attend. Conditions for liberals have deteriorated in recent months as heightened US pressure over the Iranian nuclear programme and events in Iraq have put Iran on a virtual war footing. In liberal circles fear of an increasingly paranoid regime is only matched by despair at US policies that they say provoke further intimidation or create a pretext to crack down. They highlight last year’s vote by Congress to approve $61m (£30m) of funds for “democratisation” in Iran - interpreted by the authorities as code for a “soft revolution”. Some $20m of that was earmarked for unnamed projects inside the country, with other large allocations for broadcasting. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has since requested an increase in the overall figure to $75m next year. The policy has been publicly attacked by such diverse figures as the Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, the prominent activist Akbar Ganji and the Freedom Movement leader Ebrahim Yazdi as endangering domestic proponents of change. Political prisoners say recent interrogations have focused on how the cash is entering Iran. Conservative politicians and newspapers have warned against a “colour revolution” such as those in former Soviet republics including Ukraine. They have denounced the establishment of a large US office in Dubai to gather intelligence and promote political change, which has been likened by American officials to the 1930s Riga Station targeting the Soviet Union. A report last month by ABC News in the US revealed presidential backing for a CIA “black operation” to destabilise Iran. An April investigation by the same network linked the Bush administration to Baluchi militants responsible for several bomb attacks near the Pakistan border. Such reports come amid a huge US military build up in the Persian Gulf, attempts to strangle investment in Iran and the seizure of Iranian personnel in Iraq. The authorities have responded with a campaign of intimidation, arresting some Iranians who travel to the West, have contact with Western policy organisations or hold dual citizenship. Four Iranian-Americans have recently been charged with “spying” and instigating “a soft revolution”. A former senior nuclear official, Hossain Mousavian, was also briefly detained in early May, suggesting even the political elite is vulnerable. Iranians are now frequently scared of attending conferences abroad, speaking to foreign journalists on record or working in civil society projects. As a result, Iranian voices in the West are increasingly limited to officials such as the firebrand President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and émigré groups bitterly opposed to the Tehran government. Ugly tactics are also being used on the streets, where a recent campaign against un-Islamic dress was widely interpreted as a political message to discourage dissent. More worryingly, gangsters from rough neighbourhoods have been paraded on television, badly bruised, with lavatory brushes and derogatory placards dangling from their necks, raising the spectre of the 1990s when a campaign against crime ended by targeting political dissidents. Source: The Independent

The Guardian is reporting the British embassy in Tehran is expected to lodge a diplomatic protest after Iranian guests were attacked by demonstrators and detained by police following a reception to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. Geoffrey Adams, Britain’s ambassador to Iran, was understood to be consulting the Foreign Office yesterday over a formal response to a violent protest apparently designed to deter Iranians from attending Thursday’s reception, an annual event in the British diplomatic calendar.

Dozens of guests turned back after being confronted by angry demonstrators chanting insults, including “shame on you dirty Iranians willing to eat the birthday cake of the queen of lies”. Water cans, tomatoes and paintballs were lobbed into the embassy compound during protests, which began an hour before the reception and continued throughout the event. Riot police attempted to beat back the protesters and arrested several. However, the clashes merely pushed the demonstration to a nearby side street, where many guests were confronted while making their way to the reception. “I was verbally abused as I parked my car. It was really frightening,” one Iranian guest said. Disturbances continued as guests left, with several reportedly detained by police for questioning. Amid scenes of mounting concern, embassy staff provided mini-buses to enable those remaining to leave the compound free from harassment. British diplomats voiced fury over the incident. “At the very least there will be a protest from the embassy to the Iranian foreign ministry, with possibly another from the Foreign Office to Iran’s embassy in London,” said one. While demonstrations outside Britain’s Tehran embassy are commonplace, this is the first time the Queen’s birthday reception has been targeted. The protests occurred amid an official campaign to intimidate Iranians into severing ties with foreigners, particularly westerners. The invited 1,500 guests included Iranians prominent in the arts, academia and civil society as well as many foreign diplomats and journalists. This year’s reception was preceded by reports in conservative newspapers and on websites accusing Britain of using the Queen’s birthday as a pretext to invite members of Iran’s “elites” in a joint American-British project to destabilise the country’s Islamic government.

The survival of Iran’s fragile pro-democracy movement is being threatened by the US administration’s continuing attempts to fund the country’s civil society, leading activists have warned. Prominent NGOs say the US funding for opposition groups, and Iranian suspicions that the money is designed to create the conditions for a “soft revolution”, have helped President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad justify a crackdown on their activities.

 The recent arrests of four Iranian-American dual citizens – two on charges of espionage – have sharpened what was already a fierce debate in Tehran and Washington on whether the lack of transparency in identifying the recipients of US funding makes local activists vulnerable to action by the regime. After hesitant progress during the eight years of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, a third of Iran’s 8,000 or so NGOs, ranging from women’s rights groups to those campaigning on environmental and religious issues, are believed to have either completely halted or downgraded their activities since the election of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad in 2005. “Activity for civil society has become even more costly than political activity due to US funding,” says Sohrab Razzaghi, head of Koneshgaran-e Davtalab, which trains civil society activists but was closed down by the judiciary in March without reason. “The government now sees us as the Trojan horse who function as the enemy’s fifth column.” Although Mr Razzaghi was not accused of receiving US money, he blames the suspicion surrounding the US funding for the organisation’s closure. The US allocated $66.1m (€50m, £34m) in 2006 to promote democracy in the Islamic republic. Most of the money was for organisations outside Iran including the Washington-based Voice of America TV but $20m was earmarked for activities inside the country. Recipients remained anonymous unless they chose to reveal the funding themselves. Critics in Tehran and Washington, including some within the US administration, allied governments and prominent NGOs, say this secret funding is damaging Iran’s NGO movement and the few US organisations working openly with Iranians, such as the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Open Society Institute. The husband of Haleh Esfandiari, one of those arrested on espionage charges, is among those seeking more transparency. “There is a general agreement among Iranian intellectuals inside Iran and academics outside that the loose talk of regime change and allocation of money supposed to advance democracy in Iran has done a great deal of harm to Iranian academics, intellectuals and re-searchers,” Shaul Bakhash told the FT. “It also feeds the pa-ranoia of the Iranian regime of American intentions.” Ms Esfandiari works for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center. But there is no sign the US administration will retreat. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, made clear last month the US would not be deterred from funding pro-democracy efforts in Iran by requesting a sharp increase in spending to $75m for ­“civil society and human rights projects in Iran” in 2008. A senior State Department official who asked not to be named dismissed the criticism and rejected such calls for transparency. The identity of recipients was kept classified for their own safety, he said. He described the recent arrests as a new tactic aimed at the billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Institute and argued that they were part of a long-running campaign of repression of civil society that began years before the Bush administration’s democracy spending. One insider in Washington said some officials had even welcomed the backlash from Tehran, arguing that it would clarify the divisions between the Iranian government and “opposition”. He said that Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary leading Iran policy, was a keen proponent of the funding programme, seen as another lever to use against Tehran. Critics of the programme in Washington said the state department was under severe pressure, especially from Congress to spend money and that projects were approved without proper vetting and oversight. Asked if the funding added up to an attempt at “soft revolution”, as claimed by the Iranian government, a senior State Department official replied that the US was supporting Iranians who wanted to decide the course of their country’s future. The policy was in line with President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda”, he said. “This US interference can lead to the death of civil society at a young age” said Mr Razzaghi. “The US should let societies like Iran practice democracy themselves. This may take longer but it will last longer.”

Source: Finanical Times