Iran criticizes U.S. for launching virtual embassy

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the U.S. virtual embassy for Iran will not send the U.S. message to Iranian people, the semi- official Mehr news agency reported Thursday. The launch of the virtual embassy for Iran is an indication of U.S. confession to the wrong decision to sever ties with Iran three decades ago, Mehmanparast was quoted as saying. In October, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States was planning to launch a virtual embassy for Iran by the end of this year, which would provide Iranians with online access to U.S. visa and education information. The Iranian local media reported on Wednesday that Iran blocked the virtual embassy website launched online by the U.S. administration for Iran shortly after the website officially started to work on Tuesday. Also on Wednesday, Iranian lawmaker Hassan Ghafourifard said the launch of the U.S. virtual embassy aims to create a rift between the Iranian people and their government, the state IRIB TV website reported. Iranians are not interested in having anything to do with the virtual embassy, Ghafourifard was quoted as saying. Referring to the launch of the U.S. virtual embassy as a "plot" against Iran, he said that "The Iranian nation knows and recognizes the U.S. plots in any forms," according to IRIB. Another Iranian lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh told Mehr on Wednesday that the launch of the U.S. virtual embassy is "a kind of public announcement to attract spies (from Iranians) to the U.S." The objective behind the establishment of the U.S. virtual embassy is to put political pressures on Iran, said Falahatpisheh who heads the Foreign Relations Committee of Iranian parliament. The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980 after a group of Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy and captured some 60 U.S. diplomats in 1979, with 52 of them held captive for 444 days in the hostage crisis.