https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/british-support-for-iran-revolution
Kit Klarenberg
Sep 19, 2024

All my investigations are free to access, thanks to the generosity of my readers. Independent journalism nonetheless requires investment, so if you took value from this article or any others, please consider sharing, or even becoming a paid subscriber. Your support is always gratefully received, and will never be forgotten. To buy me a coffee or two, please click this link.

Citizens of West Asia - and the world - are waiting with baited breath for a widely-anticipated backlash to provocative Israeli operations, including assassinations, against Hamas’ leadership, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The scale and form of that counterattack is a matter of intense speculation. So too is how - and whether - the Zionist entity’s Western allies will become formal belligerents in its war with the Resistance. Eerily, such a disquieting prospect was mooted as far back as October 8th 2023.

Just over 24 hours after Palestinian freedom fighters launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, when chaos abounded and Tel Aviv’s genocidal incursion into Gaza hadn’t yet begun, veteran client journalist Robert Peston took to ‘X’ to announce that nameless British “government and intelligence sources” had informed him:

“Hamas’s attack on Israel has the potential to be as destabilising to global security as Putin’s attack on Ukraine…There is a risk of this crisis spreading well beyond the Middle East…We are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world.”

This can only be considered supernatural foresight, particularly given the same spectral elements apparently failed to foresee Al-Aqsa Flood, despite multiple unambiguous indications of precisely what impended in the attack’s leadup. We are thus left to ponder whether Peston’s British intelligence sources knew what was to come because they have long-planned for, and sought, such an eventuality, and intended to make it happen, one way or another.

This interpretation is amply reinforced by leaked files revealing how late 2023, London covertly sought to secure unfettered access to Beirut’s air, sea, and land territory for its armed forces. To facilitate indeterminate future “emergency missions”, British soldiers would have been permitted to travel in uniform with their weapons visible anywhere in Lebanon, while enjoying immunity from arrest or prosecution for committing any crime.

The agreement was apparently never inked by Beirut. But its contents demonstrate London sought a scenario in which the country would be a stray trigger pull away from war, while crawling with armed British soldiers. A report published in June by arch-Neoconservative think tank Henry Jackson Society seemingly reinforces that London is preparing for war with Tehran. The organisation called for “Iranian aggression” to be “challenged” via direct attacks on the Islamic Republic’s missile facilities, bases, and Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel.

If all-out conflict does come to pass between Britain and Iran, it would represent “blowback” even more catastrophic than that produced by the CIA’s covert sponsorship of Al Qaeda in the leadup to 9/11. Declassified British Foreign Office files spell out how London pivotally supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei before and after the February 1979 Islamic Revolution. Were it not for this clandestine backing, world history may have taken a very different path indeed.

‘Minor Consolation’

“If you lift up Ayatollah Khomeini's beard, you’ll find ‘MADE IN ENGLAND’ written on his chin,” Pahlavi raged not long before the insurrectionary fervour that had angrily surged throughout his kingdom for many months finally swept him from the throne, ending his nigh-on 38-year reign. On the surface, it was a strange statement for the Shah to utter. After all, he was notoriously reinstalled as Iran’s supreme ruler by an Anglo-American coup in August 1953.

Ever since, he’d been a seemingly unwavering ally of London. Pahlavi militarily supported various British-backed regimes in the Gulf region, becoming one of the country’s biggest arms markets in the Middle East, and allowing British Petroleum to pillage Iran’s vast crude oil reserves at highly beneficial rates. Moreover, the year prior, then-opposition leader Margaret Thatcher visited Tehran in April, offering a vehement reaffirmation of London’s support for the Shah’s rule:

“I have watched the progress of Iran. I have been impressed by the speed and sureness with which an ancient land has transformed itself in a single generation from one of the world's poorer countries into one of its leading military and industrial powers. [The Shah] must be one of the world’s most far-sighted statesmen…no other world leader has given his country more dynamic leadership. He is leading Iran through a 20th century renaissance.”

Two months later, then-Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen signed off on the shipment of 175,000 CS gas cartridges and up to 360 unarmed armoured personnel carriers to Pahlavi’s notorious, British-trained internal security force, SAVAK. The materiel was urgently needed to brutally crack down on the initial wave of protests that had engulfed Tehran, which eventually led to the Shah’s ouster.

Despite these efforts, Pahlavi’s allegations of Anglo support for Khomeini were far from paranoid and bitter conspiracy theorising. By that time, London had a long and deplorable history of backing the most extreme fundamentalist factions in North Africa and West Asia, in order to counter threats to its regional interests. For example, during the 1950s, British intelligence covertly funded and directed Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, in an ultimately failed effort to depose Cairo’s troublesome nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In fact, another Iranian Ayatollah, Sayyed Kashani, played a pivotal role in ‘Operation Boot’. This coup catapulted Pahlavi back to the throne. CIA and MI6-financed and organised protests provided the Iranian army with a pretext for removing democratically elected, popular leader Mohammad Mosaddegh from power.

Despite London’s practical and rhetorical backing for the Shah in public when the protests began, behind the scenes British officials well-understood the writing was on the wall for Iran’s leader. In an internal memo dated October 1978, Prime Minister James Callaghan is quoted as saying, “on the basis of this, I wouldn’t give much for the Shah’s chances.” He believed Foreign Secretary David Owen “should start thinking about reinsuring” - code for cultivating contacts with opposition figures.

Two months later, in a private note to US President Jimmy Carter, Callaghan lamented that the Shah’s removal from power would have “the gravest political, strategic and economic implications for the West.” He bitterly added, “it is of only minor consolation that continued chaos in the country or the emergence of an extreme government dominated by the religious right wing might create almost as many problems for the Soviet Union.”

Still, in addition to expediently limiting damage to Britain’s interests in the country, Foreign Office planners were looking ahead, to a time when they could once again install a leader more to their liking. By December 1978, officials were arguing ministers should jettison all support for the Shah, both public and private, and throw their weight behind the opposition. As David Owen recorded in his memoirs:

“We needed someone with charisma who would only be in post for a few years, brave enough to make enemies, and ready later to step aside for the Shah’s son as a constitutional monarch.”

Unstated by Owen, reactionary local forces were also required to offset if not override the leftist character of the anti-Shah protests. It was fears of Tehran turning towards Moscow that inspired London to train, arm and support the savage SAVAK. A declassified December 1964 memo circulated by Information Research Department (IRD), a British spy-run black propaganda operation, spoke of SAVAK’s “successful work” targeting Tudeh, Iran’s Communist party:

“For some years IRD has collaborated with SAVAK...SAVAK has [used] sophisticated counter-espionage and counter-propaganda techniques [against Tudeh]... [A SAVAK deputy] spent 10 days in the UK at IRD’s expense in October this year and was shown a great deal of IRD’s activities...It may appear that we devote rather more IRD attention to Iran…than is justified by the known results. But Iran is an important country to us, strategically and economically.”

The incipient Iranian revolution confirmed London’s fears of a Communist takeover of the country, making support for Khomeini indispensable from the perspective of British intelligence. In ill-omened expectation of the Ayatollah furthering London’s regional objectives, BBC Persian began vociferously promoting the still-exiled Ayatollah as Iran’s opposition leader. Owen refers to this coverage - so rabidly pro-Khomeini some dubbed the station “Ayatollah BBC” - as “a form of insurance with the internal opposition.”

The British state broadcaster’s support was crucial, given it was virtually the only radio station to cover Iranian events in locally-spoken languages. Iran’s own radio and TV networks were shut down shortly after the anti-Shah protests erupted. Scholars Annabelle Sreberny and Massoumeh Torfeh have documented how BBC Persian had “never been seen as so partial in its reporting” as it was during and immediately after the Iranian revolution. And this bias was entirely by design.

British intelligence operative Nicholas Barrington, who supervised overseas BBC programming at the time, made a firm declaration that any and all pro-monarchy voices inside and outside Iran must be prevented from reaching the airwaves. In an internal memo to BBC Persian staff unearthed by Sreberny and Torfeh, he suggested giving any platform to pro-Shah elements would amount to “short-term expediency.” Instead, the station’s broadcasts should:

“Operate in the medium and long-term, influencing those who might one day form an alternative government.”

‘Good Relations’

Pahlavi fled Iran on January 16th 1979, ostensibly on vacation - although he’d never return. The Shah sought refuge in a number of countries that supported his rule, including Britain and the US, but he was told in no uncertain terms to stay away. Officials in London refused to let him settle there even temporarily, in order to decisively distance themselves. When Pahlavi eventually died in July 1980, London sent only its deputy ambassador to his funeral.

Khomeini returned to Iran in February 1979, and quickly formed an interim administration. In a House of Commons speech 11 days later, Callaghan said his government “[looked] forward to establishing good relations” with Tehran’s newly-appointed premier, Mehdi Bazargan. Despite the Iranian prime minister cancelling some outstanding arms orders with Britain that month, Whitehall was undeterred. Cabinet Secretary John Hunt wrote March 20th 1979:

"In winding up the contracts, we should not give the impression we are turning our backs on Iran…we should let the Iranians know we are ready, if they wish, to resume the supply of routine items such as ammunition and spare parts…We should also continue to encourage them to complete any contracts which they have not yet repudiated or defaulted on…In settling the defence contracts we had with the former regime, we should lose no opportunity to foster our relationship with the new government.”

Britain’s attempts to curry favour with the newly-formed Islamic Republic even endured once the siege of the US embassy in Tehran, which saw 52 US diplomatic personnel held hostage for 444 days, began in November 1979. British arms continued to flow to the country, and dozens of Iranian military officers were trained on British soil.

Margaret Thatcher, elected prime minister in May that year, was keen to continue the previous government's policy of “reinsurance.” She perceived revolutionary Iran to be a potentially useful bulwark against Soviet power in the Middle East. In a parliamentary speech on East-West relations on January 28th 1980, a month after the Red Army invasion of Afghanistan, Thatcher warned Moscow could take advantage of insurrectionary fervour in the region:

“The Soviet Union has driven a wedge into the heart of the Muslim world. If its hold on Afghanistan is consolidated, the Soviet Union will have vastly extended its borders with Iran, acquired a border more than 1,000 miles long with Pakistan, and will have advanced to within 300 miles of the Straits of Hormuz, which control the Persian Gulf. These are the facts. They are a cause for alarm both to the countries of the region and to ourselves.”

In September that year, Iraq invaded Iran with US encouragement. Both Saddam Hussein and Jimmy Carter banked on a swift collapse of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic. What resulted was the 20th Century’s longest conventional war. In contravention of a UN embargo banning supply of weapons and ammunition to either country, the CIA and MI6 armed both sides in the conflict. The war eventually claimed the lives of one and a half million people over the course of nearly eight years.

No official was ever prosecuted, penalised or reprimanded for their role in the complex conspiracy on either side of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, the ‘Arms to Iraq’ scandal was officially investigated by the Scott Inquiry in the mid-1990s. The probe was a whitewash, which exonerated all involved from wrongdoing, and kept 90 percent of its resultant report classified. Merely its conclusion, that the British government “only violated the embargo in an effort to keep the country’s machine-tool industry in business,” was deemed fit for public consumption.

Fast forward to today, and London appears anxiously eager to put an end to the “problem” it initially supported the creation of in Tehran. One wonders how many British-made weapons are still circulating among Iran’s military, and whether, without Whitehall’s secret support, we would be where we are now. At the very least, in backing Ayatollah Khomenei to crush Iranian Communism, London assisted in fomenting a grave, perpetual threat to Israel, which now stands poised to permanently eradicate the Zionist entity once and for all.