The heedless drift towards war with Iran shames Britain | Simon Tisdall

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The imperial city of Persepolis, ruined capital of Persia's kings, rises from the desert north-east of Shiraz like a rebuke to invaders, ancient and modern. Its marble columns, many still standing, were erected about 500BC when inhabitants of the British Isles were capering around in animal skins and it was Greeks who posed the biggest military threat. Donald Trump's America was a bad idea whose time had not yet come.

Britain's recent history with Iran is, for the most part, shaming. Nineteenth-century imperialists and traders exploited and bullied, redrawing its borders with the Raj. British armies invaded and occupied and, in the 1920s, helped to elevate Reza Shah to the peacock throne. The ensuing era of autocratic rule sowed the seeds of the anti-western 1979 Islamic revolution. At Persepolis, graffiti left by Victorian army officers still defaces its pillars.