Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Western leaders against "meddling" Monday as Britain announced that all but one its embassy staff detained in Tehran have now been freed. Khameini admitted there are "differences" among Iranians following last month's disputed presidential election but he told the West it would be met with a "firm fist" if it tried to exploit the unrest sparked by hard-line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.
"The Iranian nation warns the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation, beware! The Iranian nation will react," Khamenei said in a televised speech in Tehran. "The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic republic, must know that no matter if the Iranian people have their own differences, when you enemies get involved, the people... will become a firm fist against you."
Iranian leaders have accused the West, particularly Britain and the United States, of seeking to exploit the protests over the June 12 election to destabilise the Islamic regime. It expelled two British diplomats last month, prompting a tit-for-tat response from London.
It also detained nine locally recruited British embassy staff, accusing them of instigating the massive demonstrations in Tehran. On Monday the British Foreign Office announced that the eighth of the nine staff was released on Sunday evening, leaving just one in custody.
"We are able to confirm that one of our staff remains in detention," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. "It remains our top priority to get all of our embassy staff released as soon as possible." Lawyer Abolsamad Khorramshahi said on Sunday he was seeking permission to see the embassy employee still in custody, political analyst Hossein Rassam, after being told by his family of the accusations against him.
The detention of the Iranians working for the British embassy, who do not enjoy diplomatic immunity, prompted European Union governments to call in Iranian ambassadors across the 27-nation bloc on Friday. On Sunday, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the international community was united in opposition to the "intimidation" from Tehran.
And at a summit in the French town of Evian on Monday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned that the European Union was ready to take joint action. President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was "in total solidarity" with Britain. "We were particularly shocked by the very unfair, disproportionate attacks on the British government," he said.
The two leaders met ahead of a summit in Italy of the Group of Eight major powers which Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said will consider sanctions against Tehran. At a foreign ministers' meeting ahead of the summit, however, G8 member Russia warned against adopting a harsh response, saying it could jeopardise talks over Iran's nuclear programme, which the West suspects is a cover for a weapons drive.
Tehran and Washington engaged in a new war of words over the nuclear programme on Monday after Vice President Joe Biden said the United States would not stand in Israel's way in its dealings with Iran's nuclear ambitions. The chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, warned Iran would respond "in a very full-scale and very decisive way" to any attack by its arch-foe Israel, the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power.
"I think that America and Israel are fully aware what kind of result such a wrong judgement will entail," Boroujerdi said in Tokyo. "If (an Israeli attack) occurred, then the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond in a very full-scale and very decisive way."
Biden had told US television network ABC that "we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination, that they're existentially threatened." He was alluding to comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has decribed the Iranian nuclear programme as the biggest threat to the Jewish state in its 61-year history.