Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship the country the status of "international basket case". While the problems of Iran were no longer front-page news, it said, they still existed. In the circumstances, the editorial concluded, "A scholarship at The Queen’s College in memory of Neda Soltan is, indeed, politically motivated, and admirably so". UK diplomatic sources, speaking anonymously to "The Times", said that if the government had been asked, it would have advised against the creation of the scholarship, because Iran would see it as an act of provocation, and because it would interfere with efforts to free Iranians working for the British Embassy in Tehran
Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship striking as it is heartening", adding that it "honours the whole student body in Iran which has been repressed and tortured by the Islamic Republic". She commented that "In one of Britain’s top universities, it will foster crucial awareness of the government's tyrannical attitude towards education", and said that the scholarship could be Soltan's "most important legacy". A day after publishing the letter from the Iranian embassy, an editorial in "The Times" praised the college's actions. It described Soltan's death as a "brutal example" of a government's suppressing opposition, and said that the Iranian response to her death was giving