Dutch FM to Visit Iran for Talks

According to a statement by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Dutch foreign minister will meet with President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The talks will be focused on bilateral, regional and international issues, according to the statement.

Relations between Tehran and Amsterdam have soured in the past few years following the European country’s expulsion of two Iranian diplomats in June 2018, and Tehran’s reciprocal measure in February 2019.

Following Iran’s expulsion of two Dutch diplomats, the Netherlands summoned its ambassador to Tehran to hold consultations, and summoned the Iranian ambassador, describing the act as “unacceptable” and “having negative consequences” for bilateral relations.

On January 8, 2019, the Netherlands’ foreign and interior ministers wrote a letter to the parliament accusing Iran of murdering Mohammad Reza Samadi Kolahi.

The Dutch foreign ministry had earlier in June expelled the two Iranian diplomats.

Kolahi was the agent behind the blast at the central building of the Islamic Republic of Iran Party on June 28, 1981. In that explosion, more than 70 senior officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran were killed.

Dutch court records show that Kolahi was killed by members of a criminal gang in 2015.

Claims of Iran’s involvement in the incident come as the Dutch prosecutor explicitly stated in the course of the trial that there was no evidence of Iran’s complicity in the murder.

Also in September 2019, Iran voiced concern about a report by Yahoo News of the Dutch intelligence agency’s possible role in a cyber-attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear site at a meeting with a senior Dutch diplomat in Tehran.

Yahoo News had reported that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD had recruited an inside mole at the behest of the CIA and the Mossad to get their Stuxnet virus onto computer systems inside Iran’s Natanz nuclear site.