Iran has summoned the British ambassador to Tehran over the recent remarks made by UK Prime Minister Theresa May, days after UK’s foreign minister made similar statements over both Saudi Arabia and Iran.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that the absence of real leadership in the Middle East had allowed people to twist religion and stoke proxy wars.
“You’ve got the Saudis, Iran, everybody, moving in, and puppeteering and playing proxy wars. And it is a tragedy to watch it,” Johnson was shown saying in footage posted on the Guardian newspaper’s website.
“There are politicians who are twisting and abusing religion and different strains of the same religion in order to further their own political objectives. That’s one of the biggest political problems in the whole region,” Johnson said.
After that, British Prime Minister Theresa May said In her speech to the GCC Summit this week in Bahrain that Britain sees Iran as a threat to the stability of the Middle East and she was very clear that Britain cannot ignore “aggressive” Iranian actions in Syria and Yemen.
May said Britain would help the GCC states “push back” against Iran’s “aggressive regional actions.”
The British premier also said that her country wanted to “make a more permanent and more enduring commitment to the long-term security” of the Gulf and would invest almost four billion dollars in defense spending in the region over the next 10 years.
As a response, Iran summoned the British ambassador on Saturday to protest against “interference” by May.
“Following British Prime Minister Theresa May’s meddlesome remarks at the summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Nicholas Hopton, the country’s ambassador to Tehran, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry today,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Saturday.
Qassemi said the Iranian Foreign Ministry official emphasized that May’s “irresponsible, provocative and divisive” comments at the regional annual summit were “unacceptable and rejected.”
Iran seriously expects Britain to avoid repeating such unacceptable remarks in the future, he added.
Qassemi said the Iranian Foreign Ministry official emphasized that May’s “irresponsible, provocative and divisive” comments at the regional annual summit were “unacceptable and rejected.”
Iran seriously expects Britain to avoid repeating such unacceptable remarks in the future, he added.
Britain reopened its embassy in Tehran in August 2015 as a sign of the improvement of mutual ties between the two countries.
The UK had shut down its embassy in Tehran in November 2011, withdrawing its diplomatic staff after hundreds of Iranian students staged a protest outside the British embassy in Tehran against the expansion of UK sanctions on Iran, pulling down the UK flag and demanding the expulsion of the British ambassador.
