Iran Moves to Downgrade Its Relations with Britain

Iran enacted legislation on Monday to downgrade relations with Britain, in retaliation for intensified sanctions imposed by Western nations last week to punish the Iranians for their suspect nuclear development program.

The Guardian Council, an Iranian clerical body unanimously endorsed a bill approved on Sunday to expel Britain’s ambassador and reduce diplomatic contacts.

The United States and the European Union imposed harsher sanctions on Iran on Nov. 21 after the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency released a report on Nov. 8 that said Iran might be working on a nuclear weapon and missile delivery system.

Iran has denied those accusations and insists that its nuclear program is peaceful. It has called the United Nations report a false and shameful propaganda display done at the behest of the United States and its allies.

The sanctions imposed by Britain were considered the most severe because they required that all contacts with the Iranian Central Bank be severed, a step that other countries, including the United States, did not take.

Iranian lawmakers had signaled last week that they would move quickly to downgrade diplomatic ties with Britain. The Foreign Office in London responded to the passage of the bill on Sunday by calling the action «regrettable».

Under the terms, Britain’s ambassador must leave Tehran within two weeks, according to a report on the legislation by Press TV, a state-run English-language news site in Iran.

Concern that Iran may be close to producing a nuclear weapon has grown since the release of the United Nations report, particularly in Israel, which considers Iran its most dangerous enemy. Iranian warnings to Israel against attempting a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations have also escalated in recent weeks.

The heightened sensitivities to the possibility of such a strike were apparent on Monday when a few Iranian news agencies reported on a suspected explosion near the central city of Isfahan, where the Iranians process uranium.

28/11/2011, the BBC

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