TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned French Ambassador François Senemaud to strongly protest over a gathering and a rally by the MKO terrorist group in Paris on July 9 in which former Saudi spy chief Prince Turki al-Faisal also attended the meeting and pledged support for the group.

Abolqasem Delfi, the director general of the Iranian Foreign Ministry for Western Europe, said giving the permission to other countries’ officials to insult a third country “violates international law” and is “unacceptable”.

He called on the French government to announce its position on the MKO terrorist group and the anti-Iran comments of Prince Turki al-Faisal in the gathering.

Senemaud said that the French government does not recognize the MKO.

An informed source at the Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Faisal’s attendance at the meeting is a new example of the Saudi government’s “stupidity, indecency and political frustration”.

Faisal, chairman of the Board of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, said in the gathering that “the Muslim world supports you (MKO) both in heart and Soul.”

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an advisor to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Sunday that there is no doubt about the Saudi security bodies’ relations with the MKO.

The Islamic Propagation Coordination Council also issued a statement on Wednesday saying the MKO meeting in Paris was in fact a “gathering of hegemony, Zionism and Arab reactionary”.

The statement called the Paris gathering “a puppet show of the supporters and godfathers of terrorism and violence”.

Saudi Arabia has resorted to the terrorists to achieve its objectives and spread division among Muslims, the statement added.

The MKO has existed as an Islamist-Marxist group since 1965, when it fought against the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi regime. It carried out a number of attacks against U.S. soldiers stationed in Iran and years later it was put on the U.S. State Department terrorist list. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the group resorted to bombings and assassinations. Iran accuses the group of being responsible for 17,000 deaths. The group’s most devastating bombing was the 1981 blast at the Islamic Republic headquarters building that killed over 70 people, including Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, who was believed to be the second-most influential figure in Iran at the time after Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

NA/PA