Equally regrettable is the hands-off approach adopted with regard to the stolen Iranian elections. Miliband argued that "the memory of foreign intervention...is deep within all Iranians". This was why he would "not fall into the trap of allowing anyone to say that Britain...is trying to choose the government of Iran, that we're siding with one side or another". It is true: Iranians have objected strongly to outside interference, such as the early-20th-century Tsarist intrigues against their constitutional liberties, or the 1953 Anglo-American coup against their democratically-elected Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh. But Iranians have always welcomed foreign support in defence of their freedom. In 1908, for example, Persian liberals took refuge in the grounds of the British embassy after being attacked by the Shah's Russian-officered Cossacks.
This is why the Iranian opposition feels so let down by Brown and Miliband: they know perfectly well that they are being abandoned in the hope of a grand bargain on the nuclear and regional issues which the regime has no intention of delivering. It is only recently that London has begun to move away from this policy of appeasement. The refusal last month to send the British ambassador, Simon Gass, to the 31st anniversary celebrations for the Islamic Revolution is a step in the right direction.
The comparison with Merkel's Germany over Israel is even more instructive. Miliband was among the first European ministers to call for an immediate ceasefire during the 2006 Lebanon war, despite the fact that this would have left the initiative with Hizbollah. The Chancellor, by contrast, has been robust in her support for Israel's right to self-defence, restrained in her remarks when the Jewish state tries to put this into practice. Yes, Miliband has met his former counterpart, Tzipi Livni, but he was left scrambling at the end of last year when Ms Livni, now the leader of the Opposition, planned to return to London. She cancelled the visit, because Palestinian groups had persuaded a magistrate to issue an arrest warrant over her role in the 2008/9 Gaza offensive.
Miliband must realise that this is not just an issue for Israel. Islamists and Stop the War activists in Britain and other states could well use the same legal instruments to charge British ministers for war crimes in Afghanistan. If Miliband wants to avoid being served with warrants when he next visits Belgium, he should work out a sensible solution on a pan-European basis. Otherwise, it will be said that what he was holding at that fateful conference was not a banana but a boomerang.
