TEHRAN, Dec 3, (Agencies): France is to pull out part of its diplomatic staff from Tehran following the ransacking of Britain’s embassy this week by a pro-regime mob, adding to the backlash on Saturday against an increasingly defensive Iran.
The decision — a temporary precaution according to one French diplomat — underlined the seriousness of the crisis developing between Iran and the West amid the ratcheting up of sanctions over Tehran’s controversial nuclear efforts.
Britain has already evacuated all staff from its Tehran embassy following Tuesday’s rampage, and ordered Iran’s in London closed.
The expelled Iranian diplomats arrived back in Tehran early on Saturday, passing through airport service corridors to avoid media — and a pro-regime welcoming crowd of 150 yelling “Death to Britain.”
The European Union on Thursday slapped extra sanctions on Iran and warned more could be on the way because of the embassy assault, while the US Congress is poised to pass a law hitting Iran’s central bank.
Political tensions are rising in tandem with speculation that Israel is mulling air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, with or without US backing.
France’s decision to downsize its diplomatic representation came after the French, German, Dutch and Italian ambassadors were recalled for consultations on the British embassy assault.
More than half of France’s personnel, numbering around 30, could be pulled out along with the families and dependants of all its diplomatic staff, according to information gathered by AFP.
Diplomats did not give any precise figures, however.
The 700-strong French community in Tehran — mostly Iranian-French dual citizens — has not received any instructions.
The move came despite a warning by Iran to other EU nations not to join Britain’s diplomatic retaliation.
“Now the British government is trying to involve other European countries in our bilateral issue. But we have told the Europeans not to trouble relations with Iran because of Britain,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.
Iranian officials have been defiant over the degrading British ties, saying a parliamentary decision before the ransacking of the British embassy to expel Britain’s ambassador over strengthened Western sanctions was justified.
But on Saturday, one senior figure sought to disavow any connection between Iran’s regime and the hundreds of pro-regime militia members who trashed the embassy and another British diplomatic compound.
“There is no doubt that Britain is one of the oldest enemies of Iran... but young revolutionaries should not go beyond the law,” IRNA news agency quoted Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi as saying in a statement.
“I advise them not to act without the permission of the supreme leader and officials.”
Shirazi implicitly rejected British assertions the embassy was assaulted with the backing and connivance of the authorities, while warning Iran could be hurt by the backlash.
“It is important to note that sometimes certain actions overstep the law... And we could pay a high price for it,” he was quoted as saying.
Sanctions
Russia opposes new sanctions against Iran and believes negotiations with Tehran on its disputed nuclear program can be resumed, Moscow’s UN ambassador said Friday.
Vitaly Churkin told a news conference that Russia also believes the “threats and insinuations of possible military action against Iran” over its nuclear program are not helpful. He urged the international community to stop whipping up tensions and try to promote dialogue.
The UN Security Council first imposed sanctions against Iran in December 2006 and has been ratcheting up the punitive measures since then in hopes of pressuring the government to suspend uranium enrichment and start negotiations on its nuclear program. Iran has refused to do so. Enriched uranium can be used to make both nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons material.
Churkin said that in adopting the four sanctions resolutions, Russia has said “that sanctions must be targeted exclusively at Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.” In some cases, he said, the measures that were adopted “frayed that limit which was set.”
“We believe that the sanctions track in the Security Council has been exhausted,” Churkin said.
The Russian ambassador, whose country holds the council presidency this month, was also highly critical of a Nov. 8 report by the UN nuclear agency detailing Iran’s alleged secret weapons work. For the first time, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran was suspected of clandestine work that is “specific to nuclear weapons.”
Churkin said the report was more of “a PR exercise than a serious nuclear effort” and contained “very little new information about the various suspicions about Iran’s nuclear program.”
Diplomats
Iranian diplomats expelled from London in retaliation for attacks on British compounds in Tehran have arrived home, the official IRNA news agency reports, sealing Iran’s most serious diplomatic rift with the West in decades.
About 150 hard-liners waiting with flower necklaces were gathered at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport early Saturday to give the roughly two dozen diplomats and their families a hero’s welcome. But the Iranian government, apparently opposed to any high-profile display that could worsen the fallout, took the diplomats off unseen from a backdoor, reflecting Iran’s own internal political rifts.
Iranian diplomats expelled from London in retaliation for attacks on British compounds in Tehran have arrived home, the official IRNA news agency reports, sealing Iran’s most serious diplomatic rift with the West in decades.
About 150 hard-liners waiting with flower necklaces were gathered at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport early Saturday to give the roughly two dozen diplomats and their families a hero’s welcome. But the Iranian government, apparently opposed to any high-profile display that could worsen the fallout, took the diplomats off unseen from a backdoor, reflecting Iran’s own internal political rifts.
The obstruction of Saturday’s welcome ceremony reflected the disagreements between hard-liners and the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which opposed downgrading relations with Britain and condemned the attack on Britain’s embassy.
Iran called on the West to avoid a deepening diplomatic crisis following the storming of the British embassy in Tehran, saying it was an issue between Tehran and London alone, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
Britain closed its embassy after Tuesday’s incursion by hardline youths and expelled all Iranian diplomats from London. The fallout for Tehran spread when several other countries recalled their envoys, including France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
“The British government is trying to extend to other European countries the problem between the two of us,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was reported as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.
“But of course we have told European countries not to subject their ties with us to the kind of problems that existed between Iran and Britain.”
Western nations on Thursday significantly tightened sanctions against Iran, with the European Union expanding an Iranian blacklist and the US Senate passing a measure that could severely disrupt Iran’s oil income.
Missile
Meanwhile, a deadly explosion at a missile development plant last month has not affected Iran’s ballistic missile programme, its top general said in comments published on Saturday.
Armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi said the death of Iranian military experts at the Bid Ganeh base outside Tehran on Nov 12 “had no effect on the self-sufficiency unit” of the elite Revolutionary Guards — responsible for weapons research, the Resalat newspaper reported.
“The forces and military weapons of the Islamic republic, including ballistic missiles, are more than ready to confront the enemy,” he said.
The blast killed at least 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, including a key figure in Iran’s ballistic missile programme, Major General Hassan Moqaddam.
Firouzabadi reiterated repeated assertions by Iran that the blast was accidental, suggesting that safety measures may have been neglected.
Iranian commanders “who have experienced dangerous situations (during the 1980-88 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq)... do not take safety measures seriously,” he said.
Following the blast, Firouzabadi had said that work at the plant had been delayed by only two weeks as a result.
But commercial satellite photographs of the facility released by a private Washington institute suggested the explosion had caused serious destruction, with some buildings completely razed.
“The entire facility was essentially destroyed,” said Paul Brannan, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which posted the images this week.
“It looks like almost half of the buildings are gone and what’s left are the skeletons of the buildings. I would call that a complete destruction of the facility,” Brannan, who wrote an analysis of the pictures, told AFP on Wednesday.
The plant appears to have been used for the development of a new long-range ballistic missile, according to fragmentary reports published by Iranian media.
Following the blast, Firouzabadi said the base was being used for the production of an unspecified “experimental product” that could be used against the United States or Israel.
General Moqaddam’s brother, Mohammad, himself a Guards commander, spoke of a “project related to intercontinental ballistic missiles,” which “was in its final phase” and was “completely hi-tech and secret” — in remarks he later retracted.
The Islamic republic already possesses several types of medium-range missile, some capable of reaching Israel or US bases in the Middle East — both stated targets for retaliation in the event that Iranian facilities are attacked.
Iran’s ballistic programme, which along with its nuclear activities is subject to UN sanctions, has created worries in the international community that Tehran could succeed in producing missiles capable of delivering an atomic warhead.
Tehran denies any such ambition and says its nuclear programme is for civil energy and medical purposes only.