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Britain pulls diplomatic staff from Iran, orders Iranian Embassy in London closed

IRGCPolitics
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The Washington Post – Britain withdrew all its diplomatic staff from Iran on Wednesday and ordered the Iranian Embassy in London closed, after supporters of Iran’s ruling clerics ransacked the British Embassy and residential compound. European member countries were scheduled to meet in Brussels on Thursday to decide whether their embassies would remain open in light of the attack, which was a stark escalation of long-simmering anti-Western sentiment. Norway closed its embassy for the day on Wednesday, and Germany’s Foreign Office announced that it was recalling its ambassador from Iran for consultations.

 

“The PM and Foreign Secretary have made clear that ensuring the safety of our staff and their families is our immediate priority,” Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement. “In light of yesterday’s events, and to ensure their ongoing safety, some staff are leaving Tehran.”
William Hague, Britain’s foreign minister, said Britain had withdrawn its entire embassy staff from Tehran and had given the Iranian ambassador in London and his embassy staff 48 hours to leave the country.
“If any country makes it impossible to operate on their soil they cannot expect to have a functioning embassy here,” Hague said.
Hague, who called it “fanciful” to think Tuesday’s attack on the British Embassy in Tehran could have happened without the implicit sanction of the Iranian government, said London would not sever all diplomatic ties. He said the two nations would continue to keep some lines of communication open to deal with issues such as Iran’s nuclear program and human rights.

 

 

The European had been scheduled to debate new sanctions against Iran on Thursday, and Tuesday’s events appeared likely to dim hopes of persuading the Islamic republic to negotiate over its nuclear program. Instead it is expected that the meeting will now focus on whether or how the will represent itself in Tehran.
European ambassadors in Tehran had a long meeting Wednesday in which the options of withdrawing heads of missions and even closing all European embassies in Tehran were debated, said a European diplomat who asked to remain anonymous. One diplomat had visited the British Embassy grounds to search for the British ambassador’s dog, which was found. The diplomat said damage to the buildings was extreme. “The place had been systematically ransacked, paintings were destroyed and furniture was broken,” the diplomat said. “We have concluded that the attack had been extremely well coordinated by the authorities,” he said.
Iran’s leaders apparently made a deliberate decision to allow groups of young men armed with sticks to pillage the diplomatic compounds Tuesday and briefly detain six embassy staffers.
Members of the volunteer Basij militia smashed windows, set fires and hurled satellite dishes from the roof of the embassy compound while police looked on. The angry demonstrators, who numbered about 300, were denouncing Britain’s decision to impose harsh sanctions on Iran in response to new revelations about the Islamic republic’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Their actions brought back memories of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

 

 

 

But although some Iranian politicians on Wednesday lauded the looters’ actions, Iran’s Foreign Ministry, headed by an ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, condemned the embassy seizure. The conflicting reactions illustrated the growing rift in Iran between two rival blocs: forces loyal to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and those aligned with Ahmadinejad.
Ali Larijani, Iran’s speaker of parliament and former nuclear top negotiator, said the demonstrators represented Iranians’ feelings toward Britain.

“They say that the students’ behavior was ‘shameful,’ ” Larijani said in a previously scheduled news conference Wednesday, referring to British reactions to the storming of the compounds. “It is the British government’s behavior which is shameful because they have behaved in a hostile manner toward our people for the past five decades,” he added, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency. “

Let them go,” Ahmad Bakhshayeshi Ardestani, an influential analyst who is running for parliament, said of the British. “They will return to Iran because the United Kingdom needs Iran more than it needs them.”

One parliamentarian proposed that the European could make do with a single embassy in Tehran, representing all 27 member nations. Saying that the bloc is planning to integrate its foreign policy, Mehdi Mehdizadeh, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted by the Atynews Web site as saying that one embassy is enough.

But another member of parliament, Mohammad Mehdi Shahryari, denounced the incursion, which British Prime Minister David Cameron called “outrageous and indefensible” and the White House said it condemned “in the strongest terms.”

“Based on the diplomatic rights, the regulations that the embassies follow and the fact that we have accepted that this country have an embassy in Iran, then, occupying the British Embassy was a mistake,” Shahryari said.

The Alef Web site, which is aligned closely with key members of parliament, also was critical.

“Why did they do this at this moment in time?” an editorial posted on the Web site asked. It said Iran’s government should take steps against Britain, instead of “giving permission to anarchy in the name of Islam and the revolution.”

 

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