It may take years before a full account of Iran’s current political crisis, triggered by last June’s disputed presidential elections, is written.
However, someone within the establishment in Tehran is already writing it in the style of spy thrillers.
According to that version, publicized by state media and peddled in show-trials, the crisis, whose outcome remains uncertain, was the fruit of plots by Western intelligence services whose secret aim was to transform Iran into “a secular republic”.
The storyline goes something like this: In the early 1990s, British Intelligence (MI6) persuaded the Clinton administration in Washington that the Khomeinist regime in Iran was ripe for a “velvet revolution” that is to say regime change without war. The Americans agreed, leaving the Brits in charge of the conspiracy.
