UK ambassador angers Iran with 'insulting' embassy photo gaffe

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : Iran is our neighbour and friend and will continue to strengthen relations based on mutual respect."
50% : The new British ambassador to Iran has landed himself in hot water by posing alongside his Russian counterpart in chairs sat in by Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in the British embassy at the height of Iran's subjugation during the second world war.
46% : The photograph of Shercliff and the Russian ambassador sitting on two wicker chairs with a third left empty on the porch of the British embassy clearly echoed the photograph taken of Stalin, Franklin D Roosevelt and Churchill at the Tehran conference, during a time when Iran was occupied by Russia.
43% : Russia has been seen as a close ally of Iran over the past decade, working closely together over issues such as the future of Syria and the nuclear deal.
41% : The Tehran conference in November and December 1943 led to an allied agreement to open a second front against Nazi Germany, but was held in the context of a then two-year occupation of Iran by Russia.
40% : Simon Shercliff had only just arrived in Tehran to take on what is seen as one of the most difficult postings in the Foreign Office, due to the low regard with which Britain has long been held by the current Iranian government, and the sensitivity of British-Iranian relations.
35% : Talks have also still not restarted in Vienna on terms by which the US would return to the nuclear deal, lift sanctions against Tehran and so facilitate the end of Iranian breaches of the deal.
33% : British-Iranian relations are at a low point for many reasons including allegations - denied by Tehran - that Iran was behind a drone attack on a tanker, Mercer Street, in late July in the Gulf of Oman.

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