September 21, 2018
Protesters in Paris and Helsinki attacked the Iranian embassies in those cities four days apart this month.
In neither case, did the demonstrations get inside the embassy buildings. Neither incident resulted in any serious damage.
But the Islamic Republic complained vocally about the French and Finnish governments not doing enough to protect the Iranian embassies—ignoring the fact that over recent decades the US, British, Iraqi, Pakistani, Kuwaiti, Danish and Saudi embassies in Tehran have all been overrun with the police just standing by.
In Paris, the police detained a dozen people but said no charges were filed because the embassy declined to make a complaint. In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi charged that the police did not respond swiftly and failed to arrest anyone.
The Fars news agency said the attackers were about 15 members of the Kurdish Komala independence party. It said they burned the Iranian flag and threw stones that broke some windows in the embassy September 14. But it said they never crashed the gate and did not enter the embassy grounds.
Komala said some of its members protested peacefully outside the embassy, but denied burning the flag.
Four days earlier, another band of demonstrators gathered outside the Iranian embassy in Helsinki. Local news reports said they tore down and set fire to the flag. The police said they were pelted with stones thrown by the demonstrators, who also tried to hit a police helicopter filming the scene. The Finnish police arrested four of the 150 protesters but has not identified the group they were members of. The police said they had learned of the planned protest in advance and had officers at the embassy before the protest began.
The Islamic Republic has not stopped protesters who have overrun seven foreign embassies in Tehran and burned down the Saudi embassy twice, in 1987 and 2016. No one was ever tried for attacking an embassy until after the second Saudi Embassy attack three years ago. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi then condemned such attacks and ordered that action be taken against the attackers.