Iran’s Islamic vigilantes plan British embassy protest

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 12 – Hard-line members of the paramilitary Bassij announced that they will hold a rally outside the British embassy in Tehran on Sunday to protest against what they describe as London’s “conspiratorial role” in securing a resolution critical of Iran’s nuclear activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors.

The Bassij, paramilitary Islamist vigilantes loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were recently given new powers to act as the country’s back-up police force.

“If the three European bullies [France, Germany, and the UK] do more evil, they should expect to receive unanticipated blows and losses”, the headquarters of the University Students’ Bassij in Tehran said in a statement on Wednesday, in reaction to the European Union’s stance on the Islamic Republic’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

Last week, radical Islamists allied to Iran’s new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad staged a demonstration outside the British embassy. The protest came a day after the explosion of a small bomb near the offices of two British companies in downtown Tehran.

Over the past two years, the British embassy in Tehran has been repeatedly the target of attacks and violent demonstrations by the Bassij and other organised ultra-conservative groups such as Ansar-e Hezbollah. Hard-line supporters of the clerical regime burnt British and American flags in all these demonstrations. On one occasion, hand-made Molotov cocktails were thrown inside the embassy compound.