UK ready for new era in ties with Iran: Kevin Barrett

Press TV has conducted an interview with Kevin Barrett, an author and Middle East expert in Madison, to discuss the reopening of Iranian and British embassies in London and Tehran.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Tell us what do you think the significance of the opening of these two embassies and do you see a transitioning in relations meaning that are we going to see some of the same old same old from before or do you think that we are entering a new phase?

Barrett: Well I hope we are entering a new phase. We have had a long history, a couple of centuries of imperialism, Britain has been the worse defender historically. As the Iranians know the British have a long history of intervening in Iran in ways that are really quite scandalous and the 1953 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mosaddeq was actually a British plot, they convinced the Americans to do it.

But it seems that today we may be moving into a new era where the former western imperialist powers are willing to see a peaceful transition to a post-imperial kind of world - a world where different countries from different cultures will have their own independent voices, will be able to reclaim their independent cultures as Iran has with its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

This is the model for all countries not just Islamic countries but all countries that want to transcend the colonial imperial era and embrace their own identities and it has worked. The Islamic Republic has now, it appears forced the West to finally accept the reality of the Islamic Republic and that this is not going away.

So the British at this meeting are signaling that they are ready for a new era. They want to trade. They want to recognize Iran as an equal partner and not as a potential colony or opponent in warfare. I think this is all to the good and one hopes that those who have this vision of the future will triumph over the folks in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, who would rather perpetuate the imperial colonial era.

Press TV: Do you think that one of the biggest problems that has existed since the 1979 revolution is basically countries like the UK, like the United States and others being able to accept the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic? You mentioned now that perhaps England is ready to accept Iran as an equal. Do you really feel that is the case that a lot of these Western nations, some of the same ones who just sat with Iran for the nuclear agreement, do you think that the time has come that they are really are ready to accept Iran as an equal and if so what has been the major factor behind that?

Barrett: Well I would not get too optimistic. There certainly are still forces in the world that are not willing to accept anyone’s sovereignty. The international banking cabal does not even want to accept US sovereignty. So we should not be premature in celebrating here but I do think that what we are seeing is at least a medium term, sort of temporary truce with Iran if nothing else, that is the Islamic Republic through its steadfastness has just refused yield to these decades of terrorism directed against it and that has forced the West, I think, to recognize that in the state of the world that exists today the grand chessboards of power realities dictate that they have to work with the Iranian government and Iranian society as it exists today that all these fantasies of trying to overthrow, a regime change are just that fantasies.

People like Netanyahu who would like to start big Mideast war even the Third World War by attacking Iran are living in la la land. Their masters of real geopolitical reality realize that they simply do not have the ability to do that. They have had disasters in Iraq, in Afghanistan, the world is falling in a chaos and right now maybe it is time to start picking up the pieces and one way to do that is to face the reality that the Islamic Republic is here to stay.  

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