Iranian protesters stormed two British embassy compounds in Tehran today, smashing windows, hurling petrol bombs and burning the British flag during a rally to protest against sanctions.

The attacks followed the rapid approval by Iran's Guardian Council of a parliamentary bill compelling the government to expel the British ambassador in retaliation for the sanctions, and warnings from a lawmaker that angry Iranians could storm the British embassy as they did to the US mission in 1979.

Several dozen protesters broke away from a crowd of a few hundred protesters outside the main embassy compound in downtown Tehran, scaled the embassy gates and went inside. Iranian security forces appeared to do little to stop them.

[...]

It was not clear if British diplomats had been caught up in the action, or had been harmed. Embassy staff fled protesters "by the back door", the Mehr news agency said.

"Student protesters"? Since when did student protesters, in any country, rampage against foreign sanctions? Especially when student sentiment, just months ago, was against their own regime? Does anyone not think this was an Ahmadinejad operation?

There's some effed-up realpolitik going on under all this.

It could well have been a military operation or the Revolutionary Guard, which reports to the Mullahs. Students, few if any.

I hope that this does not strengthen the case for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

It was the Eisenhower administration, working with the British, that started building this pile of rubble. The CIA and British military overthrew a democratically elected government that had the audacity to nationalize British and American oil interests in the country. It has always been about oil.