Iran Seeks to Reopen London Embassy
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and James Blitz in London
Iran is seeking to reopen its embassy in the UK to conduct consular affairs, arguing that Britain should let the Iranian government send some staff to London to provide 350,000 Iranian nationals with consular services.
Hassan Ghashghavi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal affairs, told the Financial Times that Britain should allow diplomats into the country for “the sake of human rights.”
Mr Ghashghavi said that “consular affairs have nothing to do with politics.” He said Iran did not “necessarily” intend to send diplomats, rather “at least two formal staff” to address Iranians’ issues related to commercial documents or civil services such as marriage and divorce which could not be handled by local staff.
Britain pulled its diplomats out of Iran in December last year, immediately after protesters stormed and ransacked its embassy and residential compound in Tehran. The UK action forced Iran to evacuate its diplomats from London.
The ransacking of the UK embassy came after Tehran decided to downgrade Iran’s ties with Britain to chargé d’affaires level in response to London imposing new financial sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme.
In London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that there was no question of the UK allowing Iranian diplomats to reside permanently in Britain. “We will not accept Iranian diplomats in the UK and we take the view that Iran will not protect our diplomats safety,” a spokeswoman said.
The FCO noted that Britain and Iran signed an agreement in July under which the interests of their respective nationals would be handled by other embassies. Under the agreement, Sweden will handle consular issues relating to British nationals living in Iran. Oman will handle consular issues relating to Iranians living in Britain.
Britain is to allow a small number of Iranian diplomats to make an exceptional visit to London to help set up Iran’s consular interests section at the Omani embassy. But these Iranian diplomats will have to leave after a limited period.
In a clear move to show to Britain that ransacking the embassy was not supported at the highest echelons, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, recently deplored the attack on the embassy in unexpected remarks, even though he still called Britain “vicious”.
“In the occupation of that vicious embassy, the emotions of the youth were right, but their behaviour was not correct,” said the Ayatollah, who advised students not to let their actions “contradict traditional and conventional diplomacy”.
Continue reading at Financial Times