So news comes from Iran:
This week, members of Iran's Islamic regime finally pinpointed the cause of mass protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in the days since a contentious presidential election.
It was not popular will, or angry opposition supporters who felt cheated, or even the Internet. No, according to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in an address to his ambassadors, it went like this: First, the British government secretly ordered British Airways to swap all its scheduled flights to Tehran with larger 747 jets, which it packed with hand-picked “passengers … with special intelligence and security ambitions,” who flooded into downtown Tehran, received orders from coded messages on the BBC's Persian-language network, and persuaded thousands of otherwise unwilling Iranians to protest.
Within Iran, this is the most widely accepted and popular explanation for the events that have threatened to tear the country in two this month: It was a British plot.
This is, needless to say, complete and utter gibberish but it betrays a general paranoia in Iran about the British government and its role as "the wily fox" or the "puppet master". I have an Iranian friend who jokes about this - any girlfriend he loses, any financial misfortune (usually at cards), is attributed to "British perfidy" in which we (the whole of the British people) are complicit.
I feel a need to reassure Foreign Minister Mottaki that this is not the case. As someone who spend most of his time monitoring and writing about British politics, I hold no love for Gordon Brown or his government, but even I would stop short of holding him responsible for Iran's civil unrest.
There is a saying in the UK about someone being so imcompetant that "they couldn't run a whelk stall" - the token small business enterprise. Usually this is cast at the Secretary of State for a major bureaucratic department like Health, Pensions or Education.
I want to go one step further.
The British Government, in its current state, is not only incapable of running a whelk stall, it would sink an already successful whelk stall at a Whelk Lovers Anonymous festival in Whelkshire the day after main rival "Whelks R US" had an eColi scare.
My biggest concern about the recent news of arrests of local Iranian staff from the British Embassy is that, as much as the Iranian response is to be ridiculed, Britain has its most hapless seniorn politician (other than the Prime Minister) at the helm.
David Miliband is the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, has three times failed to show the courage required to topple the Prime Minister and take over Downing Street, and has been one of our most disappointing Foreign Secretaries since the Earl of Halifax (1938 - 1940). He has no reputation for courage, judgement, political nouse, or a statesmanlike nose. He is a born policy wonk, who would not intimidate a troupe of sleeping pre-schoolers, let alone the leaders of a theocratic republic with a large army and substantial oil reserves.
He carries no respect in Moscow - where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov treated him to an expletive-ridden tirade, and was derided by the Prime Minister of India, M Singh for an undiplomatic article about Kashmir.
After Britain had several of its Naval personnel held captive by the Iranian government two years ago, relationsh have been permanently strained. David Miliband is, in my view, the least statesmanlike of our senior politicians, and whose contribution I expect to be only useful insofar as it discredits the view in Iran of Britain as an omnipotent meddler in Iranian affairs.
Now if only Lord Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness himself, had been allowed to emulate his grandfather and become Foreign Secretary instead of DPM ... we would have had the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad in custody within hours, and a gay rights bill approved before you could say "Godless Infidel of the Highest Order".
And there's the proof - if we had wanted to meddle in Iranian affairs, steal the oil, appoint a proWestern President, and run off with the Supreme Leader's reading glasses, we would have had Peter Mandelson at the Foreign Office. As long as Miliband is there, the mullahs have nothing to fear.