UK, US were 'malign' force in Iran: British ex-minister
LONDON, Jan 10, 2014 (AFP) - Former foreign secretary Jack Straw said Friday that Britain and the United States had been a “malign force” in Iran in the past, after a relationship-building visit to Tehran.
Straw and three other British members of parliament visited Iran this week amid a thawing of relations between Britain and the Islamic Republic, after ties were severed in 2011 when hardline Islamists ransacked the British embassy compound in Tehran.
In an interview with BBC radio, Straw said his group had been well received by the government of Presi-
We organised together a coup d'etat to remove a democratically elected president in my lifetime in Iran
dent Hassan Rouhani and reported “considerable optimism there” about a rapprochement with the West.
“There is a very, very long history to this, to poor relations between Iran on the one hand and US and UK on the other,” Straw said.
“If you were an Iranian, just an ordinary Iranian, you could be forgiven for thinking that over the decades the US and the UK have been a very malign force -- and indeed we have been.