Tehran Protesters Target German Embassy as Feud Deepens

Islamist protesters marched on the German Embassy in Tehran on Friday and European countries summoned home their envoys in a deepening feud over a German court ruling that Iran had ordered political murders.

Iran’s president said the court verdict Thursday that top Iranian political and religious leaders ordered the 1992 killings of four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin was a passing storm provoked by the United States and Israel.

The U.S. and Israel “needed such a propaganda wave,” President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Shiite Muslim cleric, told thousands of worshipers gathered at Tehran University for Friday prayers.

“But this will bring them nothing. It is like a thunderstorm that brings clear weather in its wake.”

After prayers, 3,000 demonstrators marched to the German Embassy in central Tehran. Many pelted it with tomatoes and a few threw stones but stopped after police warnings, witnesses said.

The demonstrators issued a resolution demanding that Germany apologize by Tuesday for what they called an affront to Iran and the Islamic world.

Germany has withdrawn its ambassador from Tehran and asked four Iranian diplomatic staff to leave the embassy in Bonn.

Iran also recalled its ambassador and expelled four German diplomats.

European Union members, with the exception of Greece, recalled their envoys to Iran for consultations over the court verdict.

The court’s ruling that the murder of the four dissidents was ordered by a special operations committee whose members included Iran’s president and its religious leader forced the EU to abandon its controversial “critical dialogue” in a move that delighted the United States.

“We felt that the court decision was quite significant in confirming our long-held belief that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism,” White House spokesman Mike McCurry said Friday.