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US - Iran tensions must urgently de-escalate warns foreign office minister

TENSIONS between the US and Iran must be urgently de-escalated, a British Foreign Office minister warned earlier today.

Tory MP Andrew Murrison met the Tehran government after US President Donald Trump said the US was “cocked and loaded” to retaliate against Iran for downing a US drone alleged to have invaded Iranian air space.

The strikes were called off at the last minute on Thursday after it was revealed that 150 Iranian civilians would be killed in the attack.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said that Mr Murrison’s visit was part of Britain’s “ongoing diplomatic dialogue with Iran.”

Tensions also continue between London and Tehran over the treatment of British-Iranian dual citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran on accusations of spreading anti-regime propaganda since April 2016.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe is on day nine of a hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London in support of his wife. She also remains on hunger strike.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Robert Griffiths said the US and British military build-up in the region was replicating what happened before the “disastrous” bombing and invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Griffiths said: “The real motive for escalating this issue into a military confrontation is that powerful forces in the US political-military-industrial complex see Iran as a barrier to US domination of the strategically important greater Middle East region.

“The Iranian regime is accused of ‘meddling’ in the affairs of various Middle East countries by Western powers, whose bombings and occupations have turned the region into a killing field, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions more have fled their homes.

“The US and British war criminals who caused this bloodshed have yet to be brought to trial. Likewise, their allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia have yet to face justice for their barbarous attacks on the peoples of Palestine and Yemen, respectively.”

Mr Griffiths warned that a military attack on Iran would “plunge the region deeper into bloodshed,” setting back the struggle for democracy and social justice in the country.

He said: “Western military intervention in the Middle East must end. Britain must cease playing ‘Little Mr Echo’ to every US president, trumpeting the same crude propaganda before following the US military into its murderous adventures.”

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