Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araqchi said there were shortcomings in the UK Police’s handling of the embassy attack in two areas.
While the London Police should have devised preventive programs beforehand, they dealt with the embassy attack with very considerable delay, the diplomat noted, saying it took more than two hours to address an incident that could have ended much more quickly.
Pointing to the British government’s official apology for the embassy attack, Araqchi said Iran urges punishment for perpetrators of the raid.
In the attack on Friday, four men dressed in black climbed on to a first-floor balcony of the building, took down the Iranian flag, and waved flags of their radical cult in an apparent protest against the Islamic Republic.
No one was hurt during the incident and the trespassers, members of the so-called Shirazi cult, were arrested when they came down after around three hours. The four are detained for causing criminal damage and being unlawfully on diplomatic premises, a spokeswoman for London’s Metropolitan Police said.