Tuesday June 29, 2004 - 12:27 PM ET - Top Stories - Reuters By Irwin Arieff U.S. Expels Two Iranians After Videotape Warning UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Two Iranian security guards at Tehran's United Nations (news - web sites) offices have been expelled from the United States after the mission was repeatedly warned against its guards videotaping bridges, the Statue of Liberty and the New York subway, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. Various security guards at the mission's New York offices, were seen photographing and videotaping transportation facilities and landmarks in the New York area in June 2002 and November 2003, and were warned against doing so, the officials said. In the most recent incident, two guards whose names were not given, were expelled in the past few days after being witnessed taking videotapes and photographs at such "sensitive places," the officials said. "We were very concerned because these activities are incompatible with the stated purpose of their duties," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. In Tehran, a Foreign Ministry official said, "Such behavior runs against international conventions on providing facilities for staff of foreign missions at international organizations and lacks political judgment and moral value." Filming in public places violates no U.S. law but U.S. officials disclosed in May 2003 that they intended to question two Iranian security guards who had been seen photographing area bridges and the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, which they said could be targets for terrorist attacks against the United States like those that occurred on Sept. 11. U.S. officials said Tehran protected diplomats at its U.N. mission with security guards who stayed in the United States for just four to five months before returning home. Washington and Tehran cut diplomatic ties in 1980 after the seizure of 52 U.S. diplomats and the U.S. embassy in Tehran, but Iranian diplomats in New York represent their country only at the United Nations. Iran was more than two decades later one of three countries, along with Iraq (news - web sites) and North Korea (news - web sites), to be named by President Bush (news - web sites) as part of an "axis of evil" intent on obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Washington, joined by Britain, Germany and France, has been pressuring Tehran in recent months to renounce any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons and open all its nuclear facilities to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful. |