The Russian and British ambassadors at the Russian headquarters in Iran.
A commemorative gesture designed to celebrate that almost produces a diplomatic crisis.
That’s what just happened in Iran when the British and Russian ambassadors angered half the country by recreating a World War II image of Winston Churchill y José Stalin.
The two ambassadors, Simon Shercliff and Levan Dzhagaryan, were photographed sitting on chairs on the steps of the Russian embassy in Tehran.
They published the image, paying homage to that 1943 photo in which, in the same place and in the same chairs in which the ambassadors now sat, the leaders of the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States – Franklin D Roosevelt – posed together in Tehran after the first conference in which the three countries agreed to their alliance against the Nazi regime in Germany.
The ambassadors, however, forgot one thing: at that time Iran was occupied by Russian and British forces.
Iran’s foreign minister called the image “extremely inappropriate.”
The Russians say that no harm was intended, and that they only wanted to pay tribute to the Allied struggle against Nazi Germany.
Image source, Getty Images, Caption: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1943 Tehran conference.
The story is not the same for everyone
The Tehran conference is remembered as the time when Allied leaders agreed on the second front – the Normandy invasion – to defeat Nazi Germany.
It was a happy time in relations between London and Moscow, but for Iranians it was much more than that: the memory of an authoritarian colonial regime.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif led a chorus of criticism, calling the image “extremely inappropriate.”
“Do I need to remind everyone that August 2021 is neither August 1941 nor December 1943?” He wrote on Twitter.
“The Iranian people have demonstrated – even during the nuclear talks of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that their destiny can NEVER be subject to the decisions of foreign embassies or foreign powers. “
The tweet from the Russian embassy in which the photo was posted received thousands of angry responses.
“Ambassadors are insulting all Iranians“said Tehran English literature professor Seyed Marandi.
“The Tehran conference was a violation of Iranian sovereignty and a symbol of the historic crimes committed by the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom against the Iranians.”
The Russian embassy addressed the “ambiguous reaction” to the image, saying it “does not have an anti-Iranian context.”
“The only meaning this photo has is to pay tribute to the joint efforts of the allied states against Nazism during World War II,” he said on Twitter.
“We are not going to offend the sentiments of the friendly Iranian people.”
British Ambassador Shercliff did not tweet the photo, but did retweet the Russian comment.
The dispute comes at a time of great tension between the UK and Iran.
Earlier this month, the UK blamed Iran for a “illegal attack“against an oil tanker off Oman in which a Briton and a Romanian were killed. Iran counterattacked, calling the claim” contradictory, false and provocative. “
