Thatcher refused to protect Iran Jews in 1979 revolution, files say

Last update - 13:38 30/01/2010

By The Associated Press

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rebuffed appeals from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to assure the safety of Iranian Jews in the wake of 1979's Islamic Revolution, files allowed for release said on Saturday.

In May of 1979, according to the files, which go online on Saturday on the Thatcher Foundation Web site, Carter appealed Thatcher for "urgent private representations" to Iranian authorities to assure the safety of Iranian Jews.

Thatcher refused, saying the British Embassy did not believe Jews faced organized persecution, and that intervention "could indeed make their position less secure."

The papers also showed that the former British premier had also refused a more demonstrative response to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, saying it would do more harm than good.

The files cover the first eight months of Thatcher's 11 years as prime minister, giving glimpses of her embarking on an ambitious domestic agenda to revive the economy and curb the unions, and engaging with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4.

They were made public by the Thatcher Foundation under rules that allow for keeping documents secret for 30 years.

On Nov. 14, Mr. Carter asked in a cable for "the strongest possible remonstration or action" to pressure Iran, suggesting that Britain consider reducing the number of diplomatic staff in the country.

Thatcher responded a week later that Britain had withdrawn some staff, "but we have not hitherto believed it wise to make a political point of any reduction, partly because we doubt whether the Iranians would be much impressed and partly because of the risk of retaliatory action against those remaining."

Thatcher had met Mr. Carter twice in 1977, before she was elected, and the U.S. president came away displeased, though according to previously released papers, he mellowed by the time Thatcher became prime minister, agreeing with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's view that she was "a cooler, wiser, more pragmatic person now than the opposition leader you met in May 1977 or the dogmatic lady who visited you in Washington that fall."

The newly released files - 23,198 pages from Thatcher's personal and political files - show touches of "the Iron Lady" even before she became Britain's first female prime minister in 1979.

In 1977, in a reply to a consultant, she wrote: "I have already come to the conclusion that I shall have to take most of the major decisions myself."

That steeliness revealed itself in trivial matters too, such as putting her image on commemorative teacups. "No (underlined) permission to be given at all on any grounds of any kind," she replied to the adviser who suggested it.

(She apparently softened with time: A limited-edition Royal Worcester crockery set appeared in 1989.)

Many of the papers go online Saturday at the Thatcher Foundation Web site and many of them duplicate official government documents in the National Archives. Chris Collins, editor of the Web site, hopes that all 1 million pages, both from the National Archives and her personal files, could be digitized and many of them put online.