Iran call was PM's last-ditch effort for Western diplomacy

In a league table of the surprises this summer has brought, Monday evening’s phone call between the prime minister of the UK and the president of Iran has to rank pretty high up.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

This was the first – at least the first publicised – call between leaders of the two countries at this level since Boris Johnson spoke to Iran’s then president, Hassan Rouhani, more than three years ago. Much water has flowed beneath many bridges since then.

The UK found a way of paying its 40-year-old debt to Iran, with interest; Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was freed to return to the UK after six years in prison, along with another dual national, Anoosheh Ashoori; and the two countries have changed prime ministers and presidents more than once.

That the call happened at all, however – and happened when it did – reflects less the elimination of many (though not all) obstacles in the long-chequered UK-Iran relationship than the alarm gripping much of the Western world at the prospect of a full-scale war engulfing the Middle East.

The fear is that Iran will launch a direct attack on Israel and/or escalate the conflict on Israel’s northern border through its proxy, Hezbollah, in response to the assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, two weeks ago in Tehran. To some, the fact that it has not yet done so suggests hesitation, and the chance that Iran could be open to dissuasion; to others, it means merely that Tehran is biding its time, so that every day brings the dreaded reprisal closer.

Dissuasion appears to have been very much at the heart of Keir Starmer’s message when he spoke to Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian. In the summary of the 30-minute conversation issued by No 10, Starmer said he was “deeply concerned” by the situation in the region and urged Iran to “refrain” from attacking Israel, arguing that “war is not in anyone’s interests”.