How UK's strained relationship with Iran impacts Middle East crisis diplomacy (2024)

The UK and Iran have had a complex relationship for decades. There have been long-standing tensions over Iran’s nuclear activity, its destabilising activities in the Middle East and the arbitrary detention of dual nationals.

But these have been exacerbated in recent years by widespread human rights abuses, supplies to Russia in its war in Ukraine and the threat to British and dual nationals in the UK.

Tensions are rising in the Middle East amid concerns Iran will trigger a wider conflict in the region if it launches a massive cross-border attack on Israel in retaliation for the assassination of the Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran last month.

British officials were making renewed diplomatic efforts last night to prevent military action, with briefings from Iranian officials to the Reuters news agency suggesting Iran is waiting to see the outcome of planned negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire before deciding how to act.

The country previously rejected calls from Keir Starmer and other Western leaders to refrain from retaliation, stating it has a “legal right” to respond.

Here i looks at 10 key pressure points in UK-Iran relations that shape diplomatic ties today.

Second World War and the Anglo-Soviet invasion

Under King Reza Shah Pahlavi, who reigned from 1925 until he was forced to abdicate in 1941, Iran expanded trade links with Nazi Germany – but said it would remain politically neutral when the Second World War broke out.

But while officially neutral, Iran had friendly ties with Germany and was home to many German nationals. Due to Pahlavi’s refusal to expel German nationals, coupled with more strategic concerns, the UK joined Russia in the Anglo-Soviet invasion in August 1941.

It occupied Iran and forced the king to abdicate. He died in exile in 1944 and UK troops did not leave the country until 1946.

UK’s commercial links to Iranian oil – and what went wrong

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a British firm, controlled Iran’s oil industry from the early 20th century. In 1951, under prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran’s parliament voted to nationalise the oil industry.

Britain fought against its nationalisation, bringing a complaint to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, but the court ruled against Britain on 22 July, 1952.

The following year, a coup d’état funded and orchestrated by the US and the UK occurred in Iran and removed Mosaddegh from power. Power was then consolidated under the monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the former king’s son, and also known as the Shah.

Retired Colonel Simon Diggins, a military and defence analyst, told i the UK’s involvement with the overthrow of the democratic regime of Mosaddegh was “a strategic disaster”.

“We could probably have had what we wanted in terms of access to the oil, but we had to permit a degree of development, and we chose to align ourselves with a man who turned out to be extremely authoritarian.”

He added: “We have never really owned up to our responsibility for the coup in 1953 or recognised what the consequences were.

“It basically destabilised Iran, which was on a sort of slow post-colonial path to development, and we asserted and put in place an authoritarian leader who suited our interests, but he increasingly found himself out of favour, and became more and more oppressive towards the Iranian people.”

Revolution and the IRGC

Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979, when the monarchy was overthrown and clerics assumed political control under supreme leader, Ayatollah RuhollahKhomeini, putting an end to the rule of the Shah, who left for exile.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – a powerful paramilitary force – was established as Ayatollah Khomeini sought to consolidate various militias into a single, regime-loyal force.

The UK government remains under cross-party pressure to declare the IRGC a terrorist group. MPs and campaigners hold it responsible for funding terror groups, carrying out human rights abuses, supplying Russia with attack drones to use in Ukraine and assassination plots in the UK.

Royal relations

Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne in 1952, the year after Iran’s parliament voted to nationalise its oil industry, which had been under the control of British firm the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

In 1959, the Queen hosted the Shah of Iran, and bestowed the honorary rank of Marshal of the Royal Air Force on him.

In 1961, the Queen and Prince Philip travelled to Iran for a 10-day official visit. It was the first and last visit the royal couple ever made to the country. A planned second visit was cancelled because of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which saw Iran’s monarchy ousted.

While the late Queen is understood to have maintained correspondence with Iran’s royal family throughout her life, her death was met with official silence from Iran. Iranian people responded with mixed emotions and the country’s media coverage focused on Britain’s role in the 1953 coup – and the monarchy’s links to the British Empire.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Iranian monarch, did pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth, saying she “served as an honourable and noble force for both justice and progress and for continuity and unity for her nation”.

In 2020, the King – then Prince Charles – said he would like to make an official visit to Iran one day. But given current tensions and the approaches Iran has taken to assert itself, an official visit is not likely soon as these are sanctioned by the government, Col Diggins said.

He added that an inter-civilisational dialogue with Iran is almost impossible at the moment, because it is tied up with the geopolitics of the Middle East.

“It’s kind of put itself beyond the pale at the moment in terms of conversation,” Col Diggins said.

Iran’s nuclear programme

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – also known as the Iran nuclear deal – was signed in 2015 by Iran and several world powers, including Britain and the US. It placed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran has insisted that its nuclear programme is peaceful and that it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons.

But then US president Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, claiming it failed to curtail Iran’s missile programme and regional influence. Iran began ignoring limitations on its nuclear development a year later.

The country’s stockpile of uranium is now 27 times above the level permitted by the JCPOA. As a result, the UK has imposed sanctions on Iran, due to its “consistent and severe non-compliance with its JCPOA commitments”.

Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at LSE, told i: “Iran’s nuclear programme has been the greatest impediment to any kind of improvement in relations between Iran and the Western powers, particularly between Iran, on the one hand, and the US.”

‘Little Satan’: Iran’s view of Britain

Iran has long referred to the UK as “little Satan”. After unrest broke out following president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, named Britain the “most evil” of the “arrogant powers” that he said had encouraged the unrest.

Col Diggins said: “They still talk about us as the little Satan, the great Satan, of course, being America, but we are little Satan.”

He added that diplomatic relations “went backwards” when the UK invaded Iraq in 2003.

The closures of the UK embassy in Tehran

The fraught relationship between the UK and Iran can somewhat be charted through the closures and reopenings of the UK embassy in Tehran.

• 1952: the British embassy in Tehran is shut down by Mossadegh’s government
• 1979: Britain closes its embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution
• 1988: Britain reopens its embassy in Tehran
• 30 November, 2011: Britain orders the Iranian embassy in London to close immediately and for all Iranian diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours
• 2015: The British embassy in Tehran is reopened
• 2016: The UK appoints an ambassador to Tehran for the first time since 2011

Iranian attacks on UK soil

On 30 April, 1980, six armed members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan took over the Iranian embassy in Kensington, London, taking 26 people hostage. The siege, which resulted in the death of two hostages and five gunmen, lasted six days, ending when the SAS stormed the building.

In 2022, Sima Sabet, a journalist at UK-based news channel Iran International, survived a plot to kill her on the streets of London. Her colleague, presenter Pouria Zeraati, was stabbed in the leg by three unidentified men believed to be acting for the Tehran regime, who fled the country on a flight out of Heathrow in March 2024.

Professor Gerges said: “We have seen a very marked deterioration in relations between Britain and Iran in the past few years because of British accusation that Iran has targeted some dissidents or opposition activists and Iranian activists in the UK.

“And also because the British intelligence services believe that Iran represents a domestic threat in terms of potentially carrying out, carrying out or plotting domestic violence in Britain.

“This is on top of the British citizens who have been incarcerated.”

MPs and campaigners hold Iran responsible for 15 assassination plots in the UK over the past decade.

Risk to British and dual nationals

Research published in 2022 suggests at least 66 foreign and dual nationals have been detained in Iran since 2010.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is one of the most high-profile dual nationals to be detained in Iran in recent years. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman, was imprisoned in Iran for around six years between 2016 and 2022 on spying charges. She denied the charges but said she was forced to sign a false confession before her release.

She had travelled to Tehran to visit family when she was taken away by IRGC on the day she was due to fly home with her young daughter.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released along with British-Iranian businessman Anoosheh Ashoori, who had been detained for five years, in March 2022 after the UK government finally agreed to settle a £400m debt to Iran dating back to the rule of the Shah in the 1970s.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) currently advises against all travel to Iran.

“British and British-Iranian dual nationals are at significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention. Having a British passport or connections to the UK can be reason enough for the Iranian authorities to detain you,” the FCDO states.

There is also extremely limited UK government support in Iran. The FCDO warns that UK citizens should assume that no face-to-face consular assistance will be possible in an emergency and the UK government will not be able to help them if they get into difficulty in Iran.

Current diplomatic efforts and Starmer’s phone call with Iran

On Monday evening, Sir Keir Starmer spoke with the new President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Prime Minister said that he was deeply concerned by the situation in the Middle East and called on all parties to de-escalate and avoid further regional confrontation.

There was a serious risk of miscalculation and now was the time for calm and careful consideration, he said.

He called on Iran to refrain from attacking Israel, adding that war was not in anyone’s interests.

ProfessorGerges described the call as “unprecedented” and said it must be understood within the context of “widespread fear” in the West that the Middle East could witness “a very dangerous escalation” if and when Iran decides to retaliate militarily against Israel over its assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran.

What next for UK-Iran relations?

Despite diplomacy efforts of Britain and other European countries to calm the situation in the Middle East, Iran is expected to retaliate to Israel’s actions imminently. The extent to which it does could be the deciding factor in whether the situation in the Middle East escalates even further.

Given the UK’s historic alliance with the US over Iran, the upcoming US presidential election could influence the role the UK takes if the situation worsens.

“If Kamala Harris becomes president, I don’t think [they] will change very much from where [Joe] Biden is at the moment,” Col Diggins said.

“Historically, Barack Obama and then Biden have also been willing to have a conversation with Iran, whether [Donald] Trump will or not, I don’t know.”

Professor Gerges said: “I think it is unlikely to see any kind of improvement in British-Iranian relations, without improvement in US-Iranian relations. There is relative consensus – both in Iran, in the region and in Western circles – that wherever the United States goes, British foreign policy follows.”

He added that he has no doubt that if Trump wins the election in November, the United States could get into war with Iran.

“What we’re seeing now could really become the new reality if Trump becomes the next US president, and also if history serves as a guide, I doubt it very much whether British foreign policy or German foreign policy or French foreign policy would diverge a great deal from American foreign policy.”