Iran is rolling in mendacity: Attack on Azerbaijani Embassy Shabby cover-up and CCTV facts

Iran is capable of all sorts of heinous treachery, both conceivable and inconceivable. It is impossible to overstretch one’s mental elastic point when estimating the true magnitude of the malice capable of sprouting inside the borders of the Islamic Republic.

The regime recognises no civil order and no decency. It is in a quagmire of its own making. Iran is the emanation of evil and a threat to the entire human race, including its own beleaguered people. The lines scribbled so far may sound a bit far-fetched to those habitually conditioned, and rightly so, to perceive some good in anything preponderantly bad. It may also look as if the author of these lines is snatching at a chance to spout on his preconceived bias against the Ayatollah clique. Thy present interlocutor demurs, for he is certain of contemplating within the realm of reason, it is just he started with that which he should have probably concluded.

Let us look into what is certain, what is likely and what is not entirely improbable regarding the recent attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran.

It is very clear beyond doubt that the Islamic Republic blatantly failed to fulfil its international obligations emanating from the 1961 Convention on Diplomatic Relations in accordance with which “the Receiving State is under special duty to protect the premises of the mission from intrusion, damage, disturbance of the peace and impairment of its dignity”.

Given Iran’s time-honoured tradition of launching a wide range of attacks on foreign missions inside and outside its territory and Azerbaijan’s insistent calls on Iran to strengthen the protection of the embassy in Tehran prior to the attack, it is by no means unthinkable that what has undoubtedly the clear trappings of a terrorist attack might have been engineered by the theocracy’s own secret services.

The implausible and hastily issued explanation from Tehran’s now-dismissed police chief, General Hossein Rahimi, suggesting the incident must have been motivated by “personal and family reasons”, and the attacker was there with his two children to retrieve his wife from the embassy, was a bad start for Iran. The subsequent CCTV footage appeared to demonstrate that a security force member, tasked by the Iranian government with the duty of protecting the embassy building, did absolutely nothing visibly practical to stop the assailant from entering the premises and there were no accompanying children. What is evident from the surveillance footage violently contradicts the Iranian account, which lost credibility within a matter of hours.

Although there have been bilateral attempts to ease tensions between the two nations over the past few months, and it may appear to militate against Iran’s own interests at present to plot and execute such mendacity, one should also be mindful of the unchanging precept pertinent to regimes such as that in Tehran, that is, their utter disregard for what is sensible and adherence to destructive patterns of behaviour that may, initially, seem to be to their own detriment.

This is a proposition that should neither be dismissed as a mere probability, nor embraced without a further independent inquiry. Iran's record bespeaks malice of the highest order. Its earlier attempts to change the narrative have already backfired. Its present travails reveal hypocrisy. The rest is yet to be unveiled.