Iran’s para-military “students” rally outside European embassies

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 23 – Several hundred members of Iran’s para-military Bassij forces in universities demonstrated outside the embassies of the three main European powers in Tehran on Tuesday afternoon as the Islamic Republic continues its campaign to force the Europeans to retreat from their position on Iran’s nuclear activities. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 23 – Several hundred members of Iran’s para-military Bassij forces in universities demonstrated outside the embassies of the three main European powers in Tehran on Tuesday afternoon as the Islamic Republic continues its campaign to force the Europeans to retreat from their position on Iran’s nuclear activities.

The Bassij members – who are affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – gathered at first outside French embassy in Tehran, chanting slogans against the European states and in support of Iran pursuing in full its nuclear activities.

The demonstrators then moved towards the embassies of Germany and the United Kingdom, where they set fire to British flags before ending their protest.

The EU3 put forward a package of incentives for Iran earlier this month to persuade the theocratic state to abandon its bid to develop nuclear fuel cycle, which is widely seen as part of a covert program to develop an atomic bomb. Iran, however, rejected the offer and recommenced parts of the fuel cycle when it broke weapons inspectors’ seals at its Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan, central Iran, and started uranium conversion.

Western experts and diplomats said the commencement of work at the UCF effectively breached the November 2004 Paris Agreement which Tehran had signed with the EU3 in order to avoid referral to the United Nations Security Council.

The EU3 have called on Iran to suspend work at Isfahan and return to the negotiation table or face being hauled before the Security Council for possible sanctions.