Albania has ended diplomatic ties with Iran and ordered all Iranian diplomats and embassy staff to leave the country within 24 hours. Prime Minister Edi Rama said the decision followed Iranian “cyberattacks”.
Albania broke diplomatic ties with Iran on Wednesday, Prime Minister Edi Rama said in a statement, as the Albanian leader accused Iran of launching a massive cyberattack against the country this summer.
"The Council of Ministers has decided on the severance of diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran with immediate effect," said Rama.
According to Rama's official website, Albania "became the target of a heavy cyberattack on the digital infrastructure" on 15 July, "in a bid to ... paralyse public services and hack data and electronic communications from the government systems.
"The said attack failed," according to the statement. "Damages may be considered minimal compared to the goals of the aggressor. All systems came back fully operational and there was no irreversible wiping of data."
The Prime Minister went on to say that Iranian diplomats and support staff had been given 24 hours to leave the country.
People's Mujahedeen
Albania and Iran have been bitter foes for years, the conflict stemming from Tirana's hosting of the Iranian opposition group the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) on its soil.
The group, which fell out with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini after the revolution in 1979, found refuge in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, where they were supplied with tanks and fought against Iran's army during the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted from 1979 to 1988.
The political wing of the MEK, the Iran National Council of Resistance, established its headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris.
A part of the group stayed behind in Iraq, but when the Americans invaded the country during the second gulf war, they were placed in US-run military camps.
After the US decided to pull out most of its troops, MEK members were no longer welcome in Iraq and were transferred to Albania, where they now reside in a camp called "Ashraf 3."
Albania has been a NATO member since 2009.
The MEK regularly hosts summits in Albania that have long attracted support from conservative US Republicans, including former vice president Mike Pence who delivered a keynote address at an event in June.
A month later, the group postponed another summit citing unspecified security threats targeting the event.
The summit was called off "upon recommendations by the Albanian government, for security reasons, and due to terrorist threats and conspiracies," the MEK said in a statement released in late July.
The gathering was supposed to be attended by or joined online by various high-profile political delegations, including hundreds of lawmakers from six continents, organisers said.
In 2018, Belgian police thwarted a terrorist attack that was supposed to target an Iranian opposition rally outside Paris, after which an Iranian diplomat was convicted for supplying explosives for the plot.
For years, the MEK/NCRI were on US and EU terrorist lists, but were removed after intensive lobbying by their members, led by the charismatic Maryam Rajavi, spouse of the group's former leader Massoud Rajavi, who disappeared in 2003.
Iran's official press continues to call them terrorists, accusing the group of "assassinating thousands of Iranians" and "figthing alongside Saddam (Hussein)" and, in spite of that, "being shelterd by the US and the EU".
'Unprecedented' cyberattack
In a first reaction, the White House condemned what it said was an "unprecedented" cyberattack by Iran on US ally Albania and warned Tehran will face consequences.
A statement by National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson released on 7 September said the United States "strongly condemned" the cyberattack.
"The United States will take further action to hold Iran accountable for actions that threaten the security of a US ally and set a troubling precedent for cyberspace."
The statement added that "for weeks, the US government has been on the ground working ... to support Albania’s efforts to mitigate, recover from, and investigate the 15 July cyberattack that destroyed government data and disrupted government services to the public".
The cyberattacks and Iran's expulsion by a NATO member may complicate ongoing talks on Tehran's nuclear program, involving the US, the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.
(with wires)
