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Babylon & Beyond

IRAN: Britain evacuating families of embassy staff

By Alexandra Zaviswriter 
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Britain’s Foreign Office says it is evacuating the families of staff based in Iran amid persistent clashes between security forces and demonstrators protesting the outcome of the disputed presidential election.

‘The families of our staff have been unable to carry out their lives as usual. As a result, we are withdrawing the dependents of embassy staff,’ a Foreign Office spokesman told the Associated Press on the customary condition of anonymity.

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He said staff will remain in Iran for now and that the Foreign Office is not advising other British nationals to leave the country, the Associated Press reported.

Iranian leaders have repeatedly accused Britain and other Western governments of fomenting the unrest over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which opposition supporters contend was the result of massive fraud in the June 12 vote. The nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Friday singled Britain out as “evil.”

The accusations, denied by Western officials, are not new but have increased in intensity as Iranian authorities confront the largest street protests in three decades.

-- Alexandra Zavis in Los Angeles

Babylon & Beyond
Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

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