Fearing The End?

Earlier this month, news broke that Mohammad Reza Heidari, the Iranian consul in Oslo, had resigned his post and would likely be seeking political asylum in Norway. While Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki is for now "rejecting" the resignation, it is obvious that the regime has suffered at least one diplomatic casualty to the opposition.

But there are signs that Heidari may not be alone. Soon after his resignation, he stated that "many of [his] friends have been in touch and say they are thinking of [also resigning]." Ali Akbar Omidmehr, the Islamic Republic’s former ambassador to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, appeared to confirm this when he revealed in an interview with Voice of America (VOA) that many other diplomats in addition to Heidari had resigned from their diplomatic posts and had sought political asylum in their respective countries. Specifically, Omidmehr identified four asylum seekers as two diplomats in Germany, one diplomat in France, and one diplomat in the United Kingdom. (The total number of diplomats who have sought asylum in the West since June is now put at 27.)

Most startling, however, is that the Kuwaiti Al-Seyassah newspaper is reporting that a handful of members of Iran's Majlis parliament and officers of various intelligence agencies have been similarly seeking asylum in Western countries. Thus far, only Heidari's case has attracted considerable media attention. However, if there is soon to be a trickle of Iranian diplomats resigning their posts and Iranian politicians fleeing the country, the regime is sure to soon reveal itself even weaker on the international stage than it already has.