Tehran, June 13, IRNA � Former foreign secretary of Britain has introduced a four-step plan to change London�s foreign policy towards Tehran in a recent speech at a British university.

Straw referred to Iran as a strategically important country which should not be taken for granted.

�Iran is too big, too strategically placed to be sidelined. It won�t go away. It�s time for a fresh start,� Straw suggested in his speech on Thursday at the University of South Wales.

The former British foreign secretary served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The followings are excerpts of his lecture:

The latest reports suggest that negotiators are optimistic. But nothing will be agreed until everything is agreed. As I can testify, the Iranians are tough people to have across the table, and take matters to the wire and beyond.

I hope and pray that there will be a deal. If there is it will owe much to the courage and vision of both US President Barak Obama, and of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

A good deal will have profound and beneficial consequences for the Iranian people, but its ramifications will go much wider than that. They will enable there to be a positive strategic rebalancing in the Middle East. The very fact of a deal will help restore some confidence in the United Nations and what we mean by the �international community� at a time when the world is becoming more multi-polar and fissiparous. It is greatly to the credit of Russia and China that, despite tensions with the US and the EU on much else, they have stuck limpet-like to the agreed positions in the negotiations.

The subject of my lecture this evening is �Rogue State or Ally?�

�Rogue state� is not, so far as I can recall, a term which I have ever used about Iran,- though at times Iran has been an adversary of the United Kingdom. As for the future, I believe that Iran and the United Kingdom could become constructive partners; whether we ever become allies is more open to question.

If however we want better relations with Iran, it is essential that we better understand the long, and often difficult history between us.

In this lecture I want to explain Iran�s isolation from the west, and why there is such suspicion in Iran of the United Kingdom in particular, and the west in general.

Since the revolution of 1979 Iran has been an Islamic Republic. The final authority is the Supreme Leader, under the theological doctrine of �velayat-e faqih, the �regency of the jurist�. (�Regency� because it only has force whilst the faithful are waiting for the �occluded� Twelfth Iman to reappear).

The doctrine has some parallels with papal infallibility, or the Stuart notion of the divine right of kings. But modern Iran is by no means a one-person dictatorship, as its parody by some in the west sometimes suggests. It�s a theocracy with a democratic structure underneath, with an elected executive President, and a Parliament, the Majlis.(14 of its 290 seats are reserved for religious minorities including Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews). A Guardian Council determines who can stand as candidate. But exactly how much power elected representatives have, and the breadth of free political space, very much depends on the circumstances of the time. Sometimes, democratic interests face serious difficulties, as they did in 2009, when demonstrations against the rigging of the election were violently repressed.

...four months after 9/11, President Bush made what I regard as the most serious foreign policy error of his term of office. In his State of the Union speech in late January 2002 he chose � or rather his speech-writers chose � to lump Iran in with two seriously �rogue� states, Iraq and North Korea. All three, he said were part of an �axis of evil�. Condoleezza Rice in her memoir makes clear that the effect of this phrase was unintended.

If we were to describe all states as �rogue� if they had at some stage harboured terrorist activity, then we�d have to include Israel, and Saudi Arabia under this description.

Iran can play a more constructive role towards reducing instability amongst its Arab neighbours. There has been significant, if largely unacknowledged cooperation between Iran, the US and others to seek to end the dominance of the so-called �Islamic State� terrorists from Iraq and Syria. Of course, Iran is aligned with the Shi�a majority in Iraq. So would we if we were Iran. But in a region of extraordinary turbulence, Iran is a stable, and advancing country, with elements of democracy which have themselves strengthened in recent years.

If there is a deal at the end of this month, could Iran move from being seen by many in a pejorative light, to a more active partner with the west? I think so. It will be years, even with a fair wind, before there could be the same kind of rapprochement we have just seen between the US and Cuba, and a restoration of US/Iranian diplomatic relations. Whether Iran would ever feel comfortable itself with the idea of being an �ally� of countries like the US and the UK with whom it has had such a fractious relationship over two centuries is open to doubt. But there would be great benefits not least for the UK, and Iran, from a normalisation of relations, for a full re-opening of our Embassy, and a resumption of trade, education, and cultural interactions on a significant scale.

the United Kingdom needs to recalibrate its relationship with Iran. At a time when the British Government has been rather widely criticised for the opacity, and passivity of much of its foreign policy, Iran is a good opportunity for us to develop an explicit and distinctive foreign policy.

We have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Thus, for example, after his welcome, historic meeting with President Rouhani at the UN last September, Prime Minister David Cameron described Iran as �part of the problem� � which emboldened some of President Rouhani�s critics in Iran, who themselves oppose better relations with the UK. (I�m sure this was inadvertent rather than deliberate, but we should reflect on the fact that when it comes to dealing with Saudi Arabia, for example, we pull our punches, even though the world has faced plenty of problems which have emanated from their territory � extreme Wahhabism, and its morphing into jihadism being two.)

As part of a more distinctive foreign policy towards Iran, here are some specific next steps which should be taken:

Step 1: The British, and Iranian Embassies in Tehran, and London should fully be re-opened.

Step 2: We should encourage trade relations with Iran. If there is a deal, trade may continue to be subject to some sanctions for a period, but it is striking that of all major Western countries the United Kingdom is the only one to have adopted a unilateral policy of discouraging trade which is otherwise allowed under the sanctions� regime. The USA, toughest of all on sanctions, has not let these get in the way of its own corporations benefitting from trade with Iran where they can. So US exports to Iran have grown significantly, whilst UK exports have slumped. Boeing has resumed aircraft sales; Coca-Cola has never stopped its Iran franchise. Go the UAE, and you�ll find agents for mainland European companies already putting together deals, to be signed off the moment there is agreement on the nuclear dossier. This includes France, despite the fact that within the �E3 + 3� its positions are often the most hardline.

Step 3: As well as trade, there�s so much we could be doing to increase cultural, and academic exchanges. This will be good in itself, but will also help to encourage a normalisation of our political relations too.

Step 4: Perhaps the most difficult step, but also the most important, is to work to incorporate Iran fully into the international order. The more Iran is integrated into the international system, the more it will �open up.� Indeed, the more Iran is integrated and welcomed into the existing order, the more likely Iran will respect, and adopt international norms and ideas. This means we must help Iran take its rightful position in the international community and region. This in turn will serve British interests in the Middle East as Iran has leverage in resolving regional conflict (ie in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Yemen).

By IRNA