The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations provides the essential conditions for diplomats to perform their function, ‘without fear of coercion or harassment by the host country’. At the heart of this is the notion of immunity from the laws of the host country, which applies both to the persons of accredited diplomats and to the official property of the accredited state.
Since the principle was first accepted in 1815, at Vienna, it has had a remarkable degree of respect and observance, and in the most difficult of circumstances. That is why the occupation in 1979 of the American Embassy in Tehran, and the incarceration of American diplomats, by Iranian revolutionaries, was such a shock to the international community.
