Iran’s chargé d’affaires in the United Kingdom has responded to a recent comment in The Telegraph, calling the accusations brought against Iran in the story “baseless and manufactured.”
Mehdi Hosseini Matin responded in a series of tweets on Thursday to comments made by two UK politicians, Stephen Crabb and Steve McCabe, who chair the Conservative and Labour parties’ Friends of Israel parliamentary groups, respectively.
The post, titled “Iranian terror is a clear and present danger to the UK,” was published online on February 12 and leveled charges, mainly against the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
The piece is “filled with incorrect, unsubstantiated, and fraudulent claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to Hosseini Matin.
The IRGC was “the only organization that battled against terrorism in the region; in circumstances where the threat was so close to Europe and no one dared to stand against it,” the envoy stated, emphasizing that “the IRGC remains the region’s foremost fighter in battling terrorism.”
The writers advocated for the IRGC to be blacklisted in response to US and Israeli lobbying efforts to label the legitimate Iranian military force as a “terrorist organization.”
The Times reported in early February that the UK government had scrapped plans to blacklist the IRGC, citing Foreign Office concerns that the measure might disrupt communications with Iran.
According to the report, which cited government sources, there are also questions about how to blacklist the IRGC because, unlike other prohibited organizations, the Iranian force is an official government entity.
“Foreign Office officials have real concerns about proscription because they want to maintain access. The Home Office, and the government more broadly, supports the move. The IRGC should have been proscribed by now but the whole process is on ice,” a Whitehall source said then.
Less than two weeks earlier, the European Union also opted not to blacklist IRGC, despite calls to do so from the European Parliament.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on January 23 that the block could not list the IRGC as a “terrorist” entity without an EU court decision.
Tehran, meanwhile, strongly slammed the efforts, noting that the IRGC is an official government body of the Islamic Republic of Iran and hence such a move is in contravention of international laws and principles.
Iranian officials also stress that if it was not for the efforts of the IRGC forces in the fight against terrorism in Syria and Iraq, Europe would not have its current security.
Alleged drone delivery
Elsewhere, the Iranian diplomat rejected the accusations of Iran’s drone delivery to Russia for use in the Ukraine war.
“On the accusation of selling Drones to Russia, Iran has asked time & again from Ukrainians to bring their evidence in a direct negotiation format in a third country and still stands for that. But no answer comes from the Ukrainians,” he stressed.
“Iran is not a means for Ukraine for [drawing] more support from allies,” the envoy stressed.
Both Tehran and Moscow have consistently denied the accusations, with Iranian officials saying that Kiev has so far failed to provide any evidence for its claim.
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