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 that the scholarship could be Agha-Soltan's "most important legacy". The college has denied that it took a political decision in establishing the scholarship, stating that it aims to attract and support the best students, and arguing that refusal of the donations would itself have been a political act. Anonymous British diplomatic sources were reported as saying that the creation of the scholarship had put "another nail into the coffin" of relations between Britain and Iran. Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old philosophy student, was shot and killed on 20 June 2009 during street protests in Iran that followed the disputed presidential election.