London Police Arrests Attackers of Iranian Embassy

Hours after news broke about an attack on the Islamic Republic's embassy in London, Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran's ambassador in the city, reported that the attackers had been arrested by the police. Meanwhile, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic, IRNA, quoted the spokesperson of Iran's Foreign Ministry expressing 'strong protest' to the British ambassador in Tehran over this incident. On Friday evening, the Iranian ambassador in Britain reported an 'assault' by a group on the embassy building in London. Baeidinejad tweeted that the attackers were 'supporters of the Shirazi sect.' He mentioned that a 'small number' of individuals he referred to as 'Shirazi sect supporters' entered the embassy with 'clubs and knives' and shouted slogans against 'officials' of the Islamic Republic. According to the ambassador, the attackers were 'only on the outer balcony of the building' and 'surrounded by the police.' The news website 'Shafaqna,' which identifies itself as an 'international news cooperation base for Shia,' reported that the attackers stormed the Iranian embassy in support of Ayatollah Seyyed Sadiq Shirazi's family and to protest the arrest of Seyyed Hossein Shirazi, his son. This website also identified the attackers as being affiliated with a group called the 'Hezbollah of the Mahdi' operating in the outskirts of London. Earlier, the same website reported the arrest of Hossein Shirazi in Qom on Tuesday, March 15. Seyyed Sadiq Hosseini Shirazi, born in 1941 in Karbala, Iraq, is known as a critic of the Islamic Republic's regime. In contrast, IRNA referred to the Ayatollah's residence as the 'English Shia Shirazi sect.' The report accused the London police of showing 'minimal response to this terrorist behavior' so far. Meanwhile, the Iranian ambassador in London tweeted that 'the police, by bringing a tall lift to the street, positioned themselves in front of the embassy balcony and aimed to persuade the four young assailants to surrender through dialogue.' Moments later, the ambassador tweeted again about the 'arrest' of the four young attackers by the London police. In Iran, Bahram Qasemi, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, concurrently reported that Abbas Araghchi, the Deputy Foreign Minister, had conveyed the Islamic Republic's 'strong protest' to the British ambassador in Tehran and demanded full protection from the police for Iranian diplomats in London and immediate action against the attackers. This is not the first time the Iranian embassy in London has been attacked. The building on South Kensington Street was first attacked in 1980 by a separatist group advocating for the autonomy of Khuzestan, which led to a week-long occupation and several casualties, ultimately ending with a raid by British special forces, an event that was depicted in a film titled 'Six Days' released in 2017. In the years following the 1979 revolution, forces known as Hezbollah attacked foreign embassies in Tehran three times, each time resulting in a severance of relations between Tehran and the respective country. In 2011, a group of 'Basij students' attacked the British embassy in Tehran, which also led to a break in relations between Iran and Britain. The British embassy in Tehran was reopened in 2015.