Executive Summary

Recent conflicts surrounding Persian-diaspora protests in London reveal a systemic failure rooted not in police capacity, intent, or professionalism, but in category error. The Metropolitan Police have attempted to manage diaspora protest behavior as though it were governed by diplomatic protest norms, implicitly shaped by Geneva Convention logic—reciprocity, restraint, symbolic signaling, and state-to-state escalation avoidance.

This framework is inappropriate when the protestors are not foreign diplomats, not acting on behalf of a recognized state, and not seeking symbolic acknowledgment—but are instead diaspora actors demanding concrete, asymmetrical, moral alignment against an existing regime.

The result is a predictable escalation spiral:

Protestors interpret restraint as indifference or complicity Police interpret escalation as irrational radicalism The British state attempts neutrality while the diaspora interprets neutrality as hostility Policing becomes the proxy battlefield for unresolved foreign-policy ambiguity

This white paper argues that London is experiencing a policing failure caused by foreign-policy ambiguity leaking into domestic public-order enforcement, exacerbated by inappropriate assumptions of reciprocal restraint.

1. The Core Category Error: Diplomatic Protest vs. Diaspora Moral Mobilization

1.1 Geneva Logic: What It Is Designed For

Geneva-style diplomatic logic assumes:

Recognized sovereign actors Reciprocity of treatment Symbolic signaling sufficiency Escalation avoidance through restraint Shared incentive to preserve diplomatic norms

This logic works when:

States protest states Embassies protest embassies Diplomats expect to be treated tomorrow as they treat others today

1.2 Diaspora Protest Is Not Diplomatic Protest

Persian-diaspora protestors in London operate under a fundamentally different ontology:

They do not expect reciprocity They do not expect protection from the regime they oppose They do not view symbolic neutrality as legitimate They do expect visible moral alignment from liberal democracies They do view Western restraint as a test of sincerity

Applying Geneva logic to this environment produces structural misinterpretation on all sides.

2. The Reciprocal Treatment Fallacy

2.1 Police Concern: “If We Allow This Here, What Happens to Our Embassy There?”

This concern is rational only within diplomatic reciprocity models.

However:

The Iranian regime does not reciprocate restraint British embassies are already vulnerable independent of London policing Diaspora protestors are not bargaining for embassy norms Protestors are bargaining for alignment, not symmetry

Thus, restraint in London does not purchase safety abroad—it merely communicates hesitation.

2.2 Protestor Interpretation: “If Britain Won’t Act Here, It Won’t Act Anywhere”

Diaspora protestors are not signaling to Tehran through London policing.

They are signaling to Britain itself.

From their frame:

Policing restraint = moral evasion Crowd control = regime accommodation Neutrality = choosing the oppressor by default Silence = complicity

This interpretive gap guarantees escalation.

3. The Failure of Symbolic Policing in a Concrete-Demand Environment

3.1 What Protestors Are Actually Asking For

Not crowd latitude.

Not rhetorical support.

But concrete signs of alignment, such as:

Clear condemnatory statements Visible diplomatic downgrades Targeted sanctions Legal actions against regime proxies Recognition of regime illegitimacy narratives

Police cannot provide these.

Yet police are placed at the front line of managing the consequences of their absence.

4. Institutional Layering Failure: When Police Become Foreign-Policy Proxies

4.1 The Swiss-Cheese Stack

This failure cascade involves:

Foreign policy ambiguity Diplomatic caution Home Office risk aversion Policing restraint doctrine Diaspora moral urgency Crowd escalation Public disorder Narrative capture by extremists

No single layer is “at fault.”

The system fails because each layer is behaving correctly within its own frame, while the frames are incompatible.

5. Why London Is a Special Case

London is uniquely vulnerable because it is simultaneously:

A global diplomatic capital A safe haven for exiled dissidents A symbolic proxy for Western legitimacy A surveillance node for hostile regimes A stage for transnational grievance performance

This makes misapplied neutrality especially volatile.

6. The Policing Impossible Triangle

London police are being asked to:

Maintain public order Avoid diplomatic escalation Demonstrate moral clarity

Only two are possible at once.

Current policy attempts to achieve all three—and achieves none.

7. Strategic Implications

7.1 For Policing

Police cannot be neutral arbiters of unresolved foreign-policy contradictions Public-order doctrine must explicitly distinguish: Diplomatic protest Diaspora moral protest Transnational grievance escalation

7.2 For the British State

If moral alignment is withheld at the policy level, policing will absorb the backlash Ambiguity does not remain abstract—it manifests as street conflict Diaspora populations interpret silence faster than governments anticipate

8. Policy Recommendations

8.1 Decouple Policing from Diplomatic Reciprocity Logic

Explicitly acknowledge that diaspora protests do not operate under Geneva assumptions Train public-order units in asymmetric moral signaling environments

8.2 Reassign Moral Signaling to Political Institutions

Do not force police restraint to stand in for diplomatic caution Provide clear public narrative scaffolding so police are not misread as the state’s moral voice

8.3 Create Protest Typology-Specific Protocols

Diplomatic protests ≠ diaspora existential protests Crowd-management doctrines must reflect protestor ontology, not just tactics

9. Conclusion: The Cost of Treating Moral Urgency as a Protocol Problem

London’s conflicts are not the result of protestor extremism or police incompetence.

They are the result of treating a moral demand for alignment as a procedural crowd-control problem, and treating a non-reciprocal adversary as though it were bound by reciprocal norms.

Geneva protocols are designed to stabilize states that fear each other.

Diaspora protests arise from people who fear being forgotten.

Until British institutions recognize that distinction, London will remain a staging ground for conflicts that policing alone cannot resolve.