Others take a further cynical stride and, in spite of the strained relations and almost constant tension between the Islamic Republic and Great Britain since, maintain that the ayatollahs are originally a British product and bilateral co-operation on how best to take advantage of Iran’s national wealth goes on behind the scenes.ĭrawing a crude comparison between the Iranian and Indian experiences of British presence in the respective countries might enable one to set out two primary reasons for the abundance of conspiracy theories among the Iranian public. Strikingly, there is a good number of Iranians among the general public who believe that the Islamic Revolution was primarily masterminded by Ingilis. A byproduct of this sedimentary perception is the development of conspiracy theories about British ubiquity in Iranian affairs, exemplified by the pre-revolutionary book and television serial My Uncle Napoleon and its overriding motif that the British have a hidden hand in anything ominous and undesirable that happens to its protagonist and, by extension, to Iran. As Fakhreddin Azimi contends, ‘he long nourishment of Pahlavi authoritarianism by foreign imperial interests deeply affected the Iranian culture of politics’ reinvigorating public reservations about ‘foreign interventions and intentions, real or perceived meddling, and sententious pronouncements about the virtues of democracy’. A great majority of the Islamic Republic officials view the UK and its policies, however favourable or friendly they might prove to be at times, from a ‘threat-based’ perspective. One of the constant characteristics featuring Iran-Britain relations in the post-revolutionary era has been a strong sense of distrust and a demonizing discourse they have employed mostly as an ideological-moral framework to interpret and represent each other’s actions and policies. Notably, what makes it all the more problematic is the accompaniment of this cognitive and discursive process by a high degree of subjective homogenization that causes Britain to be perceived as a uniform evil totality in the popular and elite eye, rendering the solidified identity-image further difficult to fracture. Similarly, in Iran’s post-revolutionary official political culture, it should be noted, ‘ Ingilis’ has often been used and is still frequently employed instead of ‘ Britania’, the Persian transliterated equivalent for ‘Britain’, both to imply its allegedly deceitful nature and keep alive the sense of the potential threat it poses in the public unconscious as well as in the securitized consciousness of those in power. The transliterated word ‘ Ingilis’, which refers to England, resonates in the Iranian popular culture with all sorts of political trickery, unreliability, unpredictability and deception. ‘ Cherchil’, the transliterated form of ‘Churchill’, for example, signifies a person of great cunning and machination powers. The Iranian popular and political culture is rife with terms and expressions that associate an essentialist xenophobic belief in the purportedly inherent subtlety, duplicity and opportunism of the British. The Iranian historical experience of Imperial Britain as a dishonest and detrimental interference in Iran’s domestic politics and economy has fostered a lingering sense of suspicion in the collective memory of Iranians, affecting educated elites and the grass roots alike. ‘Wherever there is a trace of “politics”, there is a trace of the British’ is a phrase that continues to hold a strong popular conviction in Iran, with the term ‘politics’ carrying powerful connotations of political sleaze and scam in the popular mentality.
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