Khamenei sort of condemns last year's attack on British Embassy

The Guardian reports that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has finally given his verdict on the last year's storming of the British embassy in Tehran last November, saying it "was not right" to carry out the attack that provoked a diplomatic crisis between the two capitals.

"On the recent occupation of the evil embassy [of Britain], the sentiments of the youth were right but entering [the embassy] was not right," he said, according to the monitoring website Digarban, citing conservative news website baztab-e-emrooz.

The supreme leader, who has the ultimate word on all affairs in Iran, made the comments during a meeting with students on Monday, according to Digarban.  Khamenei's comments comes a month after four commanders of Iran's informal Basij militia who were involved in the storming of the British embassy in Tehran were dismissed.

In response to the attack, the UK withdrew all its diplomatic staff from Tehran, shut down the Iranian embassy in London, and ordered the expulsion of all Iran's diplomats.


At the very best the storming of the British embassy was an act of mind boggling stupidity that was almost certainly sanctioned by the government. It took Khamenei long enough to give a grudging condemnation....