EU to freeze assets over alleged Iranian plot

European heads of government will sign off on the sanctions at a meeting in Brussels on Sunday. They may also release a statement expressing deep concern at the Iranian plot, according to diplomats, although the language has not yet been finalised.

William Hague, the UK’s foreign secretary, welcomed the EU decision, and said the plot “appears to constitute an escalation in Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism outside its borders.”

The sanctions, Mr Hague said, would prevent any funds being made available to the individuals, whose identities were not disclosed but who are believed to be members of the Revolutionary Guards.

The EU decision marks the latest twist in a US-Iran standoff over an alleged bomb plot whose details seem borrowed from a Hollywood screenplay and which has stoked tensions between the long-time adversaries.

According to a criminal complaint filed a little more than a week ago by the US justice department, two men – Mansoor Arbabsiar, a naturalised US citizen, and Gohlam Shakuri, an Iranian – plotted to kill Abdel al-Jubeir, the Saudi envoy, by bombing a busy Washington restaurant.

The two men were both alleged to be members of the Quds Force, an elite arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. According to the complaint, Mr Arbabsiar at one point tried to enlist Mexico’s Zetas drug gang in the attack.

Iran has repeatedly rejected the claims and did so again on Friday, when Ali Akbar Salehi, the country’s foreign minister, called them “weak, baseless and empty”. Tehran has suggested that Washington has trumped up the charges as a pretext to mobilise international pressure against the regime.

Appearing beside Mr Salehi at a joint news conference in Ankara, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglo, expressed scepticism about the plot but also acknowledged Washington’s insistence that it had evidence. Mr Davutoglu also called for the two sides to avoid escalating tensions.

Even before the al-Jubeir case, the EU had been tightening its sanctions against Iran. It imposed asset freezes and travel bans on 32 members of the regime this month in protest of repeated human rights violations, adding them to a list of 29 officials who had already been sanctioned on those grounds.

The EU has also sanctioned 76 Iranians and nearly 300 Iranian entities connected to the country’s nuclear programme.

A statement released after Friday’s decision said it was taken “following the foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US” and the restrictive measures were aimed at “combating terrorism.”

Source: The Financial Times