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What has Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran got against little old Britain? 

Iranian demonstrators hold placards supporting defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during protest against the newly re-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The BBC Persian service has provided protesters in Tehran with vital information at a time when the mullahs are baffled by Barack Obama, says Boris Johnson. Credit: Sergei Supinsky/AFP

Well, bless my soul. What an unexpected compliment. For the last few months, we British have had the terrible feeling that everyone else is having a snigger at our expense. Our once-vaunted Anglo-Saxon economic model has been derided by Nicolas Sarkozy; our currency is still suffering; our bankers have egg on their faces; our rugby team has lost to the South Africans; and our politicians are still convulsed with an expenses scandal that has seen the Home Secretary exposed for charging her husband's porn films to the taxpayer.

The global audience has been treated to the humiliating spectacle of MPs paying back the cost of their plasma screens and Peperamis, and the world has heard so much about duck houses and lame duck prime ministers that they must think we are all completely quackers.

Just when you think that no one could conceivably take us seriously, up pops a hairy cleric and says the most amazing thing. This is not any old mullah: this is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dominant religious and political beard, and in the course of a two-hour rant last Friday at Tehran university he lashed out at the foreign agencies he believed had a role in fomenting the pro-democracy protests. He mentioned Hillary Clinton; he had scornful words for the Zionist entity. But as he worked his way up to a frothing climax there was one nation he singled out for its baleful influence. Yes, he told the chanting students, the two-faced diplomats of the West had cast off their masks. They were exposed as wolves, bent on destruction. "They are showing their true enmity towards the Islamic state, and the most evil of them all is the British government!" At which point the student body of Tehran university began shouting "marg bar Ingles!" – "death to Britain!"

Fancy that, eh. Even allowing for variations in the translation, which has also been given as "most vicious" and "most dark-hearted", it is obvious that President Khamenei thinks of us as a potent force in the region. Indeed, he thinks that we are the most ruthless and manipulative of all foreign powers.

That's right: little old us! Doesn't it make you almost burst with pride? For decades, we have got used to the idea that we are a dowdy middle-ranking sort of country that long ago abandoned any pretensions to influence east of Suez. We thought we were wholly dependent on America for our nukes and our cryptography – and here's this top mullah who seems to think that the Tehran protests are being staffed by swarms of burka-wearing Bonds, and that the whole thing is being orchestrated by Dame Judi Dench from her lair on the South Bank.

Can he possibly be right? Well, yes he is, partly, in the sense that the BBC's Persian service has had a big influence on the demonstrations, supplying the kind of critical and impartial commentary that the regime would never normally allow. This ayatollah's curse is a vindication of the BBC, and the principle of taxpayer-funded broadcasting.

If the BBC's chiefs have an ounce of common sense they will seize the moment, cut Jonathan Ross's salary in half and use the money to hire another 20 Farsi-speaking analysts – because that service is the BBC doing what it is supposed to be doing: using new technology to let nation speak unto nation, to lead people around the world to understand the repression that they endure, to hold up a mirror to their societies of a kind that their governments will never let them see. All credit to the Beeb honcho who decided to expand the Farsi service, then; and yet I can't quite persuade myself that we are once again the greatest power in Middle Eastern politics, or that 70 years of relative decline have been reversed.

There is a good reason why the ayatollah bashed Britain with such singular ferocity, and it is to do with the Iranians' changing view of America. We have been co-opted to play the role of Great Satan, because America is now led by Barack Obama, or Barack HusseinObama, as Fox News always calls him, and it is obvious that the mullahs don't know quite how to handle him.

Obama's intelligent speech in Cairo has had a big impact in the Muslim world, and it is obvious that it is his presence in the White House – far more than any BBC broadcast – that is giving hope to the demonstrators in Tehran.

I don't know whether this election was rigged. Even if there were as many irregularities as the protesters claim, it seems sadly possible that Mr Ahmedinejad retained a majority of the votes, if not 63 per cent. Indeed, I saw one BBC television report that scrupulously portrayed the messianic reception he received in parts of the country, with weeping women queuing to touch the hem of his raiment.

Nor do I know whether the demonstrators will succeed in their demands, or whether they will peter out over the next few days, overwhelmed by the brutality of the official response.

But there is one thing we can say for certain: that in the 30 years since the fundamentalist revolution, this is the nearest the mullahs have come to feeling the anger of the people. This is the nearest Iran has come, in our lifetimes, to a true brush with democracy.

The key point is that I do not believe it could possibly have happened had John McCain been elected. Why? Because McCain entertained American journalists by singing, to a Beach Boys' tune: "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." If you want a population to abandon a hardline leadership, you don't threaten them with nuclear war.

Barack Obama has shown the Iranian bourgeoisie that America is willing to engage, to treat their country with respect, and it is that sudden hope – of a new role and status for Iran – that is driving the protesters to see if they can be rid of their crazy regime.

Who knows whether they will succeed, but we can safely say that the BBC and Barack Obama have done more to change Iran than Fox News and George W Bush.

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