The Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission on Sunday approved a bill that necessitates the government to fully cut Tehran's relations with Britain.
Mohammad Karami-Raad, a member of the commission, told FNA that the commission discussed "important and serious" issues with regard to the bill, and approved a single urgency for introducing it to the parliament.
"The commission members also condemned the recent remarks made by the British ambassador to Tehran as well as the other hostile moves made by the British government against our country throughout the history," the lawmaker explained.
"Finally and after voting among the members of the national security commission, the decision was made to fully sever ties with Britain," Karami-Raad announced.
He noted that some commission members had asked for downgrading the ties, but parliamentarians eventually decided to fully halt Tehran's relations with London.
The bill is scheduled to be submitted to the parliament's presiding board for a final discussion and approval by all parliament members.
The move by the Iranian lawmakers came days after British Envoy to Tehran Simon Gass criticized the human rights situation in Iran, and said, "Today, International Human Rights Day is highlighting the cases of those people around the world who stand up for the rights of others - the lawyers, journalists and NGO workers who place themselves at risk to defend their countrymen."
"Nowhere are they under greater threat than in Iran. Since last year human rights defenders have been harassed and imprisoned," Gass said in a memo published by the British Embassy in Tehran on December 9.
Other lawmakers, including head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, had previously blasted the negative role of the British ambassador to Tehran, and asked the country's foreign ministry to expel him from Iran.
Following Britain's support for a group of wild demonstrators who disrespected Islamic sanctities and damaged private and public amenities and properties in Tehran on December 27, 2009, members of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission drafted bill of a law requiring the country's Foreign Ministry to cut relations with Britain.
The British government's blatant stance and repeated remarks in support of the last year unrests inside Iran and London's espionage operations and financial and media support for the opposition groups are among the reasons mentioned in the bill for cutting ties with Britain.
Iran has repeatedly accused the West of stoking post-election unrests, singling out Britain and the US for meddling. Tehran expelled two British diplomats and arrested a number of local staffs of the British embassy in Tehran after documents and evidence substantiated London's interfering role in stirring post-election riots in Iran.
In one of the court hearing sessions, British embassy's local staff in Tehran Hossein Rassam, who was charged with spying, admitted cultivating networks of contacts in the opposition movement using a £300,000 budget.
Rassam also confessed that the local staff of the embassy had attended protests against the June's presidential election results along with two British diplomats, named in court as Tom Burn and Paul Blemey, and that he had attended meetings with the defeated opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, alongside Burn.
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