And it ridiculed last year’s defectors, saying they refused to return home for personal reasons that did harm to the national interest.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast told reporters Tuesday, “No one in the Foreign Ministry believes their intentions were political. This can mostly be seen as preferring their personal interests to the national interest.” He did not explain what personal interest he thought the defectors were pursuing.
Mehman-Parast also said that over the past three decades of the Islamic Republic about 20 diplomats have refused to return home after completing their three-year assignments abroad. He preferred to describe them as refusing to return home, rather than as defectors.
It was the first time the Foreign Ministry had provided any such number, which should probably be viewed as a minimal figure rather than a true count.
It was also the first time Mehman-Parast had acknowledged last year’s defections, albeit while avoiding that term. Earlier he had denied that anyone had defected—or refused to return home.
The latest defectors said they quit their Foreign Ministry jobs in protest over the handling of the 2009 elections and the treatment meted out to protesters. Farzad Farhangian quit his post as press attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Brussels and received political asylum in Norway. Hossain Alizadeh, the Number Two diplomat in Helsinki, quit his post and sought asylum in Finland. In January of last year, Mohammad-Reza Heydari, a consular official in Oslo, defected and was granted asylum in Norway.
Mehman-Parast said the two latest defectors had completed their missions more than a year earlier and argued that if they were truly defectors, they would not have “announced it 15 months after ending their missions.”
While the logic of that argument was obscure, both men said their assignments had only been completed recently. In fact, last September 11, Mehman-Parast himself said Alizadeh’s assignment had just been completed August 20, which was not 15 months previously.