Iran Focus
London, 26 Jan – Europe has undeniable evidence about the Iran’s terrorist activities on the Green Continent, according to Ali Majedi, the former Iranian ambassador to Germany, in an interview with Iran’s state-run ISNA news agency.
This shocking admittance comes as European authorities have taken a series of measures against the Iranian government’s terrorist activities in their countries, including sanctions against an Iranian “commercial” airliner and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
Majedi said: “To back their claims, the Europeans have produced evidence that we can’t deny. They have witnesses for their claims. There are some who think they can serve their country’s interests through arbitrary acts.”
Sanctions
Earlier this week, Germany has sanctioned Iran’s Mahan Air for its role in supporting the Iranian Qods Force, a US-designated terror group, by transfer fighters and funds to other terrorist groups across the Middle East. Mahan Air is now banned from landing in Germany.
Earlier this month, the EU sanctioned the MOIS and two of its staffers for planning several terrorist attacks and assassinations across Europe over the past four years, most notably in 2018. The MOIS, its deputy minister and director general of intelligence Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, and its Vienna-based diplomat Assadollah Asadi are now subject to asset freezes and travel bans.
Assadi is actually in jail in Belgium, awaiting trial for orchestrating a failed bombing attack against the Iranian opposition’s Free Iran rally in Paris in June 2018. A similar attack on a Persian New Year gathering in Albania was thwarted in March, which led to Albania expelling the Iranian ambassador and one of its diplomats.
While in October, Denmark accused Iran of being behind the attempted assassination of an Iranian opposition figure on their soil and the Netherlands accused Iran in January of plotting the assassinations of two dissidents on Dutch soil in 2015 and 2017.
Denmark’s Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen welcomed the sanctions, tweeting: “EU just agreed to enact sanctions against an Iranian Intelligence Service for its assassination plots on European soil. Strong signal from the EU that we will not accept such behaviour in Europe.”
The main targets of the attacks were members of the Iranian Resistance, 2,500 of which now live in Albania after being resettled there in 2016 to evade mullahs’ attacks, and the Resistance has warned multiple times that Iran will continue to undermine national security until other countries continue to expel Iranian diplomats for good.
