Source: http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=236756

Tehran Times Opinion Column, Oct. 3, By Hassan Hanizadeh


No more glory days for the Old Fox

TEHRAN, Oct. 2 (MNA) -- Middle Eastern people will never forget the colonial record of Britain or the Old Fox’s efforts to loot their natural wealth.

Hundreds of years ago, Britain began its cultural attack on the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent in order to create divisions between nations and divide the world into small weak countries.

Britain encouraged an increase in slavery in Africa and transferred hundreds of thousands of African slaves to the Americas, where it continued to violate their human rights in the cruelest manner.


In the Indian subcontinent, Britain fomented sectarian tension, robbed the national wealth, and forced thousands of Indians to immigrate to various parts of the world.

In the Middle East, Britain created the Zionist regime to deal with the rising Islamist wave and to undermine regional nations’ efforts to establish Islamic unity.

The ominous declaration of the then British foreign minister Arthur James Balfour in October 1917 was a turning point for the Middle East since Britain, with the help of the Zionist Agency, soon began forcing Palestinians to leave their own land and encouraging Jews to immigrate to Palestine from different parts of the world.

In Iran, the insidious interference of colonial Britain in the process of the Constitutional Movement in the early twentieth century led to the return of dictatorship, and the ill-omened coup of Reza Khan Mirpanj (the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty) was actually a plot against the Iranian nation devised by London.

Also, after the defeat of the Ottomans in Iraq in 1916, Britain decided to take control of the country by creating the monarchy and installing King Faisal I.

The presence of British forces in the oil-rich Basra region of southern Iraq paved the way for British Petroleum (BP) to exploit the natural resources of the Iraqi nation.

In the same region, Britain tried to create division among the nomads in order to trigger a civil war. However, thanks to the awareness of Iraqi tribal leaders, Britain’s plots were neutralized.

And now, after decades, Britain is again becoming nostalgic about the days of empire, when the sun never set on the British flag.

Along these lines, after the fall of Baghdad, British forces were deployed in southern Iraq to once again try to realize their old dream by fomenting divisions between the inhabitants of the region.

Britain’s main objective is looting the region by dismembering southern Iraq through the creation of a U.S.-British oil cartel led by one of Iraq’s neighboring Arab countries.

In order to reach this goal, London has dispatched MI6 spies to southern Iraq to create tension in the region.

The recent tensions in Basra and southern Iran were also the result of British interference. However, the plots failed in Iran due to the awareness of the residents of Khuzestan.

Britain then tried to pressure Iran by ratifying a resolution against it at the most recent session of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors in order to isolate the Islamic Republic.

But despite all these efforts, regional nations will never be deceived by the old colonialist power, and it is Britain that will become isolated in the international arena because the world has changed dramatically since the 19th century.

The Iranian nation is well aware of Britain’s treacherous plots and is not afraid to reduce economic and political relations with London because the United Kingdom would suffer the most damage in such a turn of events.