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| Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok says the Dutch secret service 'has strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin' in 2015 and in 2017 |
The EU hit
Iran's intelligence services with sanctions Tuesday after accusing Tehran of
being behind plots to assassinate regime opponents on Dutch, Danish, and French
soil.
The move by
the 28-nation bloc was announced as the Dutch government said it believed Iran
was behind the murders of two dissidents in 2015 and 2017.
"Very
encouraging that (the) EU has just agreed on new targeted sanctions against
Iran in response to hostile activities and plots being planned and perpetrated
in Europe, including Denmark," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen
said.
The
"EU stands united -- such actions are unacceptable and must have
consequences," he tweeted.
Sanctions
include the freezing of funds and other financial assets of the Iranian
intelligence ministry and individuals, officials said.
Denmark led
efforts for sanctions after allegations that Tehran tried to kill three Iranian
dissidents on Danish soil.
A manhunt
related to the alleged plot against three Iranians suspected of belonging to
the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) led to the
shutdown of bridges to Sweden and ferries on September 28.
France last
year imposed sanctions on two suspected Iranian agents and others from Iran's
ministry of intelligence and security.
The French
security services concluded that the head of operations at the Iranian
intelligence ministry had ordered a plot to bomb a rally of the People's
Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) opposition group in a suburb of Paris in June last
year -- which Tehran strongly denied.
"When
the sanctions were announced, the Netherlands, together with the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark and Belgium met Iranian authorities,"
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said.
The meeting
conveyed "serious concerns regarding Iran's probable involvement in these
hostile acts on EU territory," Blok said in a letter to the parliament in
The Hague, also signed by Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren.
"Iran
is expected to cooperate fully in removing the present concerns and, where
necessary aiding in criminal investigations," the letter said.
"If
such cooperation is not forthcoming, further sanctions cannot be ruled
out," it added.
Nuclear
deal
In the
past, the EU has trod cautiously on Iran as it sought to save a beleaguered
nuclear deal with Tehran after the US withdrew last year and imposed new
sanctions.
The Dutch
ministers said that at a meeting with Iranian officials "it was emphasised
that the measures were not linked" to the Iran nuclear deal.
"Nevertheless,
Iran will be held to account for all matters that affect EU and international
security interests...," including the assassinations in the Netherlands in
2015 and 2017, the letter said.
Dutch
police have previously named the two victims as Ali Motamed, 56, who was killed
in the central city of Almere in December 2015, and Ahmad Molla Nissi, 52,
murdered in The Hague in November 2017.
Dutch news
reports had said Motamed was living in the Netherlands under a false name and
is really Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi -- the man behind the largest bomb attack
in Iran in 1981.
Nissi was
shot dead in The Hague from a moving car, later found to have been stolen from
a suburb outside Rotterdam.
Dutch
police said Nissi was the chairman of the Arab Struggle Movement for the
Liberation of Ahwaz, a group working for the independence of the Ahwaz area in
southwestern Iran.
Last June,
the Netherlands expelled two Iranian embassy workers in connection with the
murders.
Tehran at
the time protested the expulsion as an "unfriendly and destructive
move" and threatened to retaliate.
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