Iran into the British embassy and all I got was this burnt Union Jack

So Iran is not the most friendly country, we all know that. Iranians are always saying, "Death to [Country X]" or denying a country's right to exist, which is fairly serious when the IAEA suggests Iran is working towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. The most recent example of Iran's belligerence happened on Sunday when Iran's MPs voted overwhelmingly to downgrade diplomatic relations with the UK after the UK (along with Canada and the US) announced new measures targeting Iran's nuclear aspirations. Some Iranian MPs even chanted "Death to Britain" while they voted, which -- along with the tear gas attack by a South Korean MP against his fellow parliamentarians -- is a good reminder that, as bad as the behaviour in our legislatures is, we still are not anywhere near rock bottom.

Another major difference between Western liberal democracies like Canada and the Iranian theocracy is that when Iran downgrades diplomatic relations, they really downgrade diplomatic relations. From the BBC:

Protesters in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have broken into the UK embassy compound during a demonstration against sanctions imposed by Britain. Militant students are said to have ransacked offices, burned the British flag and smashed embassy windows. The move comes after Iran resolved to reduce ties following the UK's decision to impose further sanctions on it.

The students clashed with riot police and chanted "the embassy of Britain should be taken over" and "death to England". Students were said to have ransacked offices inside the building, and one protester was reported to be waving a framed picture of Queen Elizabeth II.

If Canada downgraded diplomatic relations with another country, our citizens would never do that. First of all, no one would be paying any attention to what Parliament was doing since the average Canadian pays attention to federal politics for about 5 days every election cycle. (Here's a rhetorical question for you: If the CBC news plays in some form an average of every 15 minutes and no one actually cares what it says, do we still have to pretend that the CBC is a vital Canadian institution? Can we get rid of George Stroumboulopoulos yet?)

Second, there isn't a critical mass of politically active youth in this country. Our demographics are skewed way more towards the geriatric than Iran; our median age is 41 while the Iranian median age is 26. And most of the young people we do have who might be inclined to take part in a political movement are busy with school or gainfully employed in jobs they need to pay off their student loans and credit cards.

Third, our security forces would never allow our citizens to carry on like that. We instituted a borderline police state when we had the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario and police powers have only grown stronger since then under the "Harper Government". Admittedly, the massive police force we spent $1 billion dollars on for protection at the G20 summit in Toronto could not prevent broken windows and burning cop cars in the downtown core, but if the police only needed to guard a single building I am sure they could handle that. No one in the Canadian government would countenance Canadian diplomacy getting a black eye (despite no other country caring what we do on the international stage) so I am sure we would find a way to crack down on embassy looters.

Fourth, any city big enough to have an embassy and a bunch of angry protesters would have plenty of people from whatever country they are protesting and they would make a lot of potential protesters feel bad. It's harder to hate the 'Other' when you have human contact with them -- they stop being the Other. Tehran lacks the sizable British population necessary for this humanization process to occur.

Fifth, our protesters have already expended most of their bile on hockey riots and innocuous Occupy movements. I'm only half-joking.

Essentially, if Canada downgrades diplomatic relations with another country, all it means is that our consulate delivers one crate of maple syrup on Christmas rather than five.

***

Letting protesters invade an embassy within your territory and scare off the embassy's employees is a clear violation of international law, so you would expect the international community to shriek even though (or maybe because) international law is notoriously difficult to enforce. Plus Iran does not have a stellar diplomatic record with protecting embassies to begin with (see: Hostage Crisis 1979, Iranian), and this whole thing started because the West wanted to further ostracize Iran so you would other countries to exploit this opportunity to pile on. Let's find out by taking a closer look at how the international community reacted to the assault on the British embassy:

US

The US condemned the attack "in the strongest terms". "We stand ready to support our allies at this difficult time," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Really, United States? You are the leader of the free world and the one remaining superpower yet "we stand ready to support our allies at this difficult time" are your "strongest terms"? This was an international incident, not a bake sale to raise money for a fledging WNBA team. Way to sound like FEMA. I bet your strongest terms would be a lot stronger if it was your embassy being looted, and it very well could have been since you implemented the same measures as the UK.

Russia

Russia said the attack was "unacceptable and deserving condemnation".

Thanks for the huge understatement, Russia. Hey, maybe you can stop giving the Iranians nuclear technology so we don't have these problems in the first place. Sticks and nukes can obliterate entire cities, but words never replaced a smashed embassy window. You know what else deserves "condemnation"? Putin, GazProm, crony capitalism, and mediocre human rights records.

France

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe also condemned the incident, adding: "France expresses its full solidarity with the UK."

Welp, I guess no one expected much from France, anyway.

EU

A spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said it was a "totally unacceptable incursion".

Wow, I wish my job was spokeswoman in charge of stating the obvious. I would go after that job, too, if it wasn't for the fact that the EU is collapsing on itself like a black hole.

Canada

...

Sorry, there was nothing in the article I read about Canada's diplomatic reaction to the ransacking because hey, if no one in Canada cares about Canadian foreign policy, why should anyone else. I did look on the Foreign Affairs website, though, where I found a statement condemning the storming of the embassy. Here's what John Baird had to say:

Canada is outraged.... My officials have summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires to Canada to convey our displeasure directly.

Pretty good. However, if the Ministry really wanted to deliver the goods, it should have posted a video of John Baird berating the chargé d'affaires. If they're going to make the chargé drive all the way to Baird's office, they might as well have a video camera on hand to record the event. It would be deliciously awkward to watch an Iranian diplomat appointed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bite his tongue while being told off by an atheistic homosexual.

I was wondering why the Ministry only summoned the chargé d'affaires for censure and not the Iranian ambassador himself. I assumed it was because the ambassador was not available, but then I checked out the Iranian embassy website and it turns that the chargé is the head of the mission hear in Canada. That is a diss in the world of international diplomacy.

The incident obviously brings to mind the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis and gives me an opening to reminisce about my favourite part of that Crisis (insofar as it's possible to look back on a 444-day hostage situation fondly): After the Iranians captured (almost) all of the American Embassy's employees on November 4, they released all the women and black people they had captured that same month. The reason they gave was because that they had sympathy for "oppressed minorities". Basically, they tried to divide and conquer America by driving a wedge between the white male elitists and the rest of American society. I always thought that was surprisingly insightful for a group of angry university students* that had never been to America, but it did not work; the hostage crisis actually brought Americans closer together.

Regardless, releasing those oppressed hostages was one of the great disses of the US by a sworn American enemy because of the elevated platform the message was delivered from and for the way it cut to the bone. Its gotta be right up there with Osama Bin Laden lecturing the American people on the evils of major corporations and the extermination of Native-Americans in his 2007 video, and Fidel Castro lambasting American imperialism and oil interests in his 1960 address to the UN in New York.

In comparison, Hugo Chavez has a long way to go if he hopes to claim the mantle of America-Criticizer-In-Chief. I don't understand why he sucks so bad because there is plenty of substance for him to point at. Somehow his histrionics are even worse than some of the American politicians he criticizes despite him not inhabiting the same over-the-top, 24-hour-news-cycle milieu.

*: There is some dispute over how much of the hostage crisis was actually the university students' initiative and how much was the result of higher-ups in the Iranian government apparatus pulling the strings, including Ayatollah Khomeini himself.