The election of a hardline religious President of Iran is bad news for the West’s attempts to talk the regime down from its nuclear ambitions (Foreign Editor’s Briefing, June 27).

In that region a hardliner is uninhibited as to revealing his real intentions, while a moderate camouflages the same intent with emollient language.

In my opinion the European trio, Britain, France and Germany, should realise that negotiations with this regime are and always were a dangerous waste of time.

Only a serious ultimatum from the world’s lone superpower will halt this terrifying threat to global security.

ALEX PINE
Hendon, London

From Mr Keith Fisher

Sir, Your panel on Iran (June 27) tells us that the country became an Islamic republic in 1979. Iran’s recent history, and our involvement in it, did not, however, begin with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. In 1953 the Shah was brought to power by an MI6 and CIA-orchestrated coup against Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq, Iran’s secular, popular, democratically elected leader.

It was the subsequent brutal and corrupt 26-year rule of the pro-Western Shah that led to a backlash in the form of Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution.

This is one of the most important threads in the development of militant political Islam, yet few people seem aware of how the West’s foreign policy provoked it.

We need to know our history if we are to learn from it. There’s little chance of either in the current climate of self-censorship and propaganda.

KEITH FISHER
Oxford

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