Defections By Iranian Diplomats Continue To Mount

From CNS News and Newsmax:

Defections by Iranian Diplomats Mount




A diplomat based at Iran’s embassy in Brussels on Tuesday said he was seeking asylum in Norway, adding his name to the list of Iranian diplomats defecting from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line regime.



Farzad Farhangian, a press attaché, said at a press conference in Oslo, Norway, that he wanted to “take a stand in support of the Iranian people.”



He added: “During the last 30 years, I was of service to the Iranian people, but the deviation that the Iranian Republic has reached leaves me no choice.”



Farhangian was accompanied at the press conference by Mohammed Reza Heydari, who defected from his post as consul-general in Oslo in January and was granted asylum in Norway.



He said at the time he was resigning in protest against the violent crackdown on Iranians following Ahmadinejad’s disputed election victory in June 2009 and the killing of protesters in December, CNSNews reported.



Farhangian’s defection came a day after Hossein Alizadeh, deputy head of the Iranian mission in Helsinki, Finland, announced that he would seek asylum in Finland, citing Iran’s election “fraud” and the harsh response to protests.



In January, it was revealed that Abolfazi Eslami had resigned from his job at the foreign ministry in Tehran four years earlier and sought refuge in Japan.



Amir Hossein Jahanchahi, founder of the Europe-based Green Wave opposition movement, said in a statement that "other defections from diplomats abroad will follow."



CNSNews observed: “Five years after a newly installed President Ahmadinejad ordered a purge of dozens of Iranian diplomats considered too ‘liberal,’ a slow trickle of defections suggests growing unhappiness with his hard-line policies within the diplomatic corps.”



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