Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday said that extremists were responsible for an attack on Tehran’s embassy in Paris the day before, and that the city police’s response to the attack was slow and weak.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi as saying officers did not arrive quickly after the disturbance was reported. He said the troublemakers were members of an extremist organization, but he did not identify the group, IRNA said.
“It is necessary for the French government to take serious measures to protect Iranian diplomatic missions in that country,” Ghasemi said, according to the news agency.
A Paris police spokeswoman said “individuals” had thrown objects and smashed windows at the embassy. She said the responding officers searched 12 people but didn’t take anyone into custody because embassy personnel didn’t want to file a complaint.
The spokeswoman provided information about the incident but would not give her name, a common police practice in France.
Ghasemi said that some suspects had been arrested and that Iran had asked the French government to prosecute and punish them, IRNA reported. Tehran is doing its own investigation of the commotion and the allegedly tardy arrival of Paris police, the news agency said.
The Paris police spokesman said she did not have information about the motives or identities of the people outside the embassy.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard last week claimed responsibility for a missile attack targeting an Iraqi base of the Kurdish separatist group Party of Democratic Kurdistan of Iran. The Revolutionary Guard said the attack killed at least 11 people and wounded 50.
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