voted Sunday to require the government to completely sever diplomatic relations with Britain.
The legislation must still go the full Majlis for a vote. It isn’t clear if Speaker Ali Larijani will allow it to come to the floor. He has been silent about relations with the United Kingdom and many think he views the legislation with disdain.
The committee vote culminates a full year of venting against Britain and repeated calls by Majlis deputies for a lowering of relations to punish Britain for perceived offensives.
It is suspected the proposal to sever relations was approved this week because Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who had fought all such proposals, had been fired six days earlier.
Deputy Mohammad Karimi-Rad, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said some members had just wanted to reduce ties by expelling Ambassador Simon Gass and not accepting any new ambassador, leaving the embassy to be run by a chargé d’affaires.
But, in the end, he said, the committee voted to end all diplomatic ties, booting the embassy as well as the ambassador out of Tehran. He did not say what the vote was.
The move to sever relations gained prominence late last year after a senior political analyst at the embassy, an Iranian national, was arrested along with some other local employees and charged with fomenting the post-election riots under orders of the embassy.
The move gained renewed momentum this month when a statement over Gass’s name critical of Iran’s human rights compliance was posted on the embassy website. The statement said nothing new; it just reiterated years of British criticism of Iran. But deputies pointed to it as some novel and especially offensive action by Britain, labeling it an illegal interference in a domestic Iranian issue.
Gass noted in the statement that December 10 was human rights day, which he said was dedicated to highlighting the cases of people around the world who “stand up for the rights of others.” His statement continued: “Nowhere are they under greater threat than in Iran.”
The conservative daily Javan has been outspoken in condemning Britain and campaigning for downgrading ties. In a recent commentary, Javan said, “Gass’s claims of human rights violations take place at a time when the United Kingdom is still controlled by the monarchy as it was in the Middle Ages. Every year, billions of dollars are spent on the Queen’s Court as well as in the revelry of the imperial family.”