Iran has embroiled Britain in an escalating domestic row over the country's nuclear policy by charging Tehran's former senior nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, with passing classified information to the British Embassy. “He has been informed of the charges that he has given the British Embassy information contrary to the security of the country,” Gholam Hossein Ejehi, Iran's hardline Intelligence Minister, was quoted as saying by the country's official news agency. It did not say when Mr Mousavian would be put on trial.| Your current negotiator is an American spy. Ooops, shouldn't have told you that. My bad. |
He was Iran's top nuclear negotiator under Iran's reformist former President, Mohammad Khatami, and spent ten days in jail in May on unspecified charges of espionage before being released on bail. As former nuclear negotiator, Mr Mousavian regularly met European envoys in Tehran from October 2003 in talks to resolve the nuclear dispute.
“It was normal diplomatic activity in that we sought to find out what the Iranian position was and he conveyed the Iranian position,” one European envoy told The Times. “Whether they are simply claiming that in doing their government duty people like Mousavian were traitors or whether they are claiming that over and above their government duty Mousavian passed sensitive information we don't know,” the envoy added. “They could be criminalising normal diplomatic behaviour or they could be accusing him of something much more precise.”
Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University in New York, said he really did not think that Mousavian was a spy. "He was the appointed representative - he was supposed to meet with representatives: that was what he was all about.” Professor Sick told The Times: “I see this all in the context of domestic politics. In my view, Ahmadinejad is making a real play for power.” He said that Mr Ahmadinejad had come back from his recent trip to New York feeling triumphant after all the publicity he received there. “He came back feeling now or never he’s going to reassert himself.”
Mr Mousavian is an ally of Hashemi Rafsanjani, another powerful former President who, with Mr Khatami, accused the current president of endangering the Islamic Republic with his confrontational rhetoric on the nuclear issue.
Without naming either of his predecessors, Mr Ahmadinejad lashed out at them indirectly on Monday by branding domestic critics of his nuclear policies as “traitors” working for the West. His outburst highlighted a growing rift within the upper echelons of the Iranian regime.
It came on the same day that Mr Rafsanjani, a leading rival of Mr. Ahmadinejad, made a public speech in which he warned of a “serious danger” to Iran from the US. Significantly, he was accompanied by Mr. Mousavian, who was making his first public appearance since May.
The charges against Mr Mousavian will be seen as a challenge to Mr Rafsanjani, who is a pragmatic conservative who believes in accommodation with the West. “From the viewpoint of the Intelligence Ministry, he [Mousavian] is a criminal ... this is definite and provable. But the decision [on the case] rests with the judge,” Mr Ejehi said. He made clear Mr Mousavian had powerful allies, saying: “Influential persons have called the judge and tried to get him acquitted.”
Professor Sick sees the accusations against Mr Mousavian as an attempt by the President to undermine Mr Rafsanjani. Similarly, the abrupt removal of Ali Larijani as chief nuclear negotiator in September was seen as an attempt by the president to seize more control of the nuclear file from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, IranÂ’s supreme leader.
Because many Iranians are steeped in the history of British imperial meddling in Iran in the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain is often a convenient whipping boy for Iranian hardliners who invariably portray it as “perfidious Albion”.