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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| UK expels Iran diplomats after embassy attack |
| 2011-12-01 |
| (Rooters) - Britannia shut Iran's embassy in London and expelled all its staff on Wednesday, saying the storming of the British mission in Tehran could not have taken place without consent from Iranian authorities. Foreign Secretary William Hague also said the British Embassy in Tehran had been closed and all staff evacuated following the attack on Tuesday by a crowd that ransacked offices and burned British flags in a protest over sanctions imposed by Britannia on Tehran. Iran warned that Britannia's closure of the Iranian embassy in London would lead to further retaliation. Tuesday's incident was the most violent so far as relations between the two countries steadily deteriorate due to Iran's wider dispute with the West over its nuclear programme. On top of its ban on British financial institutions dealing with Iran and its central bank last week, Britannia has called for further measures and a diplomatic source said London would now support a ban on oil imports from the Islamic Theocratic Republic. Hague said Iranian ambassadors across the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... had been summoned to receive strong protests over the incident. But Britannia stopped short of severing ties with Iran completely. "The Iranian charge (d'affaires) in London is being informed now that we require the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London and that all Iranian diplomatic staff must leave the United Kingdom within the next 48 hours," Hague told parliament. "We have now closed the British embassy in Tehran. We have decided to evacuate all our staff and as of the last few minutes, the last of our UK-based staff have now left Iran." |
| Posted by:Fred |