TEHRAN, Sept. 22– Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that law enforcement forces closed an institute affiliated with the French Embassy here because it had carried out “illegal” operations. In a statement, the ministry highlighted the French Embassy’s “persistent and prolonged disregard” of repeated warnings from relevant Iranian authorities over the past few years regarding the necessity to legally register the French Language Center and to obtain a permit for its operations.
The statement was issued after French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux, in a statement on Sunday, described the closure as a “new attack against France’s cultural presence in Iran,” which is “unjustifiable and unacceptable.”
Paris will “take appropriate measures to respond,” he said. The Iranian Foreign Ministry also accused the French Embassy in Tehran of having consistently ignored terms of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as well as disrespecting Iran’s laws and regulations.
Closing the French language center was in accordance with an Iranian court order, it said. According to a statement on Sunday by Iran’s judiciary, the French language center, “under the guise of teaching a foreign language,” was carrying out projects contrary to Iran’s Islamic culture. Also, it would “identify Iran’s elites,” and had “created networks and facilitated their exit from the country.” (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
