TEHRAN – An eye-catching sequel to a true-life TV series featuring Iranian intelligence battle against foreign espionage has sparked broader debate among ordinary Iranians as well as public figures about British hostile activities against Iran. 

Produced by Mojtaba Amini, the series, Gando 2, is a true-life story of the sacrifices made by an Iranian intelligence agency in combating British efforts to establish a spy network in Iran, one that is tasked with collecting highly confidential information about Iran’s nuclear negotiations and its economy in the midst of a Western economic pressure campaign against the country.

Gando 2 portrays the British embassy in Tehran as being actively implicated in the espionage. It uses a visa-issuing process to recruit spies from among top Iranian officials, provides accommodation and diplomatic cover for MI6 agents, and exploits its diplomatic status to oversee and direct moles in Iran.

Up until now, the British embassy has remained silent on the series, refusing comment on it. But this silence did not dissuade Iranians from all walks of life from highlighting British malign activities in Iran over the course of history. Some even pointed to the most recent machinations by the British embassy in Tehran involving the British ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire. 

In January 2020, the British ambassador, who tries his best to get closer to ordinary Iranians by doing many things such as reciting popular Persian poems, was briefly arrested by Iranian security forces in front of Amir Kabir University of Tehran, where a mob of protesters gathered to protest the crash of a Ukrainian airliner a few days earlier. Macaire was accused of instigating unrest in a situation fraught with anger. 
The ambassador denied the accusation, saying he didn’t participate in any protest. 

“Can confirm I wasn’t taking part in any demonstrations! Went to an event advertised as a vigil for victims of the PS752 tragedy. Normal to want to pay respects- some of the victims were British. I left after 5 mins when some started chanting,” he tweeted on January 12, 2020.

The arrest of the ambassador quickly came to an end and Macaire continued to do his job in Tehran after a short visit to his home country.

The Gando 2 series reminded Iranians of much older British subversive activities in Iran, most notably the 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh. 

The prime minister went down in history as the man who stood against the British and American rapacity and prevented them from plundering Iranian resources- not for so long. 

British and American firms had for decades controlled oil wealth in Iran and other countries in the region. But when the Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia reached a fifty-fifty agreement on oil revenues with the Saudis in late 1950, the British sensed the danger. They refused to strike a similar deal with Iran, prompting Mossadegh to fundamentally change Iran’s approach by pursuing a nationalization of Iran’s oil wealth. In early 1951, the prime minister, with great fanfare, announced the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry, a move that sent the British scrambling to topple him by staging a coup together with the Americans. They jointly orchestrated a coup against Mossadegh that brought his government down. the coup succeeded in overthrowing Iran’s prime minister but it poisoned the country’s relations with the West for decades to come. Some pundits in the West believe that the coup played a significant role in fueling a surge of Iranian anti-Western nationalism and poisoning Iran’s relations with the West into the 21st century.

Mohamad Reza Shah, whose reign was saved thanks to the foreign-backed coup, rewarded Britain and the U.S. with billions of dollars in arm sales deals. 

When the Iranian people, led by Imam Khomeini, rose up against the Shah, Britain and the U.S. wasted no time in siding with their puppet against the Iranian people. They pursued regime change policy in Iran right from the start and when they failed, they supported Saddam Hussein in his eight-year war against Iran while even refusing to deliver arms ordered by Iran under the Shah. In fact, Britain still owes as much as £400m to the Iranian government arising from the non-delivery of Chieftain tanks ordered by the Shah before the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

In the decades after the Iran-Iraq war, the British joined other Western countries such as the U.S., France and Germany in putting pressure on Iran under the accusation that Iran was pursuing a nontransparent nuclear program. They pressured Iran to enter negotiations over its nuclear program. Since at least 2000, Iran has been in close contact with the Europeans to convince them that it does not pursue a nuclear bomb. In October 2003, it reached an understanding with the European countries of France, Germany, and the UK on its nuclear program. Iran agreed to give more access to international inspectors. It also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to the Non-nuclear Proliferation Treaty.

While Iran kept up its end of the bargain, the Europeans went back on their word, prompting Iran to resume its nuclear activities, which led to another pressure campaign by the West that ultimately culminated in the P5+1 nuclear negotiation with Iran. 

The negotiations resulted in a landmark deal in 2015, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the very deal that the Europeans failed to even partially honor after former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from it. 

The British acted in bad faith right from the start, according to Gando 2. They recruited moles in Iran’s negotiating team to collect information on the country’s nuclear deliberations. These moles have been directed by MI6 officers who, in some cases, were affiliated with the British embassy in Tehran.  

Of course, Gando 2 may have been produced with a tinge of imagination but at the end of the day, it has its roots in reality. The British may brush aside this series as another conspiratorial move by Iran originated in the mantra of “the English job.”

But Gando 2 could be indicative of a growing understanding in Iran that Britain is once again up to something. Seyed Vahid Karimi, an Iranian diplomat and a fellow at the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, warned that the UK once again intends to resume its policy of interfering in other country’s internal affairs.

In an op-ed for Iranian Diplomacy, he warned that Britain “seeks to revive the English job,” referring to the title of a book by former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.