\nJEDDAH: Iranian exiles on Thursday urged European countries to consider closing Iranian embassies amid accusations that these were being used in the mullah regime’s alleged campaign to assassinate those who are calling for regime change in Tehran.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt is time that the Iranian regime\u2019s embassies in Europe, including the one in Albania, be shut down,\u201d said Ali Safavi, an official of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThey are not diplomatic centers, they direct and facilitate the regime\u2019s terrorist operations abroad,\u201d Safavi said a day after Albanian police announced that they had thwarted a planned attack by a Tehran-backed \u201cterrorist cell\u201d against opponents of the Tehran regime in the Balkan country last year.<\/p>\n
\nAbanian police said the group belonged to the elite Quds force which runs foreign operations for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.<\/p>\n
\nThis cell \u201chad planned, among other things, a terrorist act foiled in March 2018\u201d targeting a religious celebration of the Bektashi, a Sufi group, in Tirana, the statement said.<\/p>\n
\nAbout 3,000 members of the People\u2019s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, which is linked to the Paris-based dissident umbrella organization (NCRI, have settled in Albania since 2014 after they were attacked in Iraq. They live in a camp near Durres, the main port in Albania.<\/p>\n
\nThe ceremony was attended by members of the exiled Iranian opposition group the People\u2019s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), according to police.<\/p>\n
\nAlbania agreed in 2013 to take in some 3,000 members of the MEK at the request of Washington and the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\nThey currently live in a compound in the northwest of the country.<\/p>\n
\nAlbanian police chief Ardi Veli had been quoted as saying the plot was uncovered and thwarted in March, but kept secret until now while evidence was assemble.<\/p>\n
\nHe said the main plotters fled and are now in Turkey and Austria.<\/p>\n
\nOn Wednesday police published photos of three Iranians and one Turkish national allegedly involved in the \u201cterrorist cell.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe leader \u201cresides in Turkey\u201d and another \u201chas an Austrian passport,\u201d according to the police statement.<\/p>\n
\nPolice declined to confirm whether international arrest warrants had been issued.<\/p>\n
\nFrench authorities had earlier accused Iran\u2019s intelligence ministry of plotting to attack the NCRI\u2019s annual rally outside Paris in June o2018. Agents linked to Iran were detained while traveling in a vehicle with bomb-making equipment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time to shut down Tehran\u00a0regime embassies, Iranian resistance urge European countries JEDDAH: Iranian exiles on Thursday urged European countries to consider closing Iranian embassies amid accusations that these were being used in the mullah regime’s alleged campaign to assassinate those who are calling for regime change in Tehran. \u201cIt is time that the Iranian regime\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}