Iran sharply criticized the US decision to put penalties on its intelligence ministry on Saturday after Albania, a NATO partner, was the target of a significant cyberattack.
After accusing Iran of being behind the July 15 cyberattack that attempted but failed to shut down public services and gain access to data and government communications networks, Albania broke diplomatic ties with Iran on Wednesday.
The attack “disregards standards of appropriate peacetime state behavior in cyberspace,” according to the United States, which imposed penalties on Iran’s intelligence ministry and its minister Esmail Khatib as a result on Friday.
Nasser Kanani, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, stated on Saturday: “The ministry of foreign affairs strongly opposes the action of the US treasury department in repeatedly punishing the Islamic Republic’s ministry of intelligence.
In a statement, he continued, “America’s instant backing for the Albanian government’s fraudulent claim… demonstrates that the American government, not the latter, is the designer of this scenario.”
The People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group whose members are sponsored by Albania, was the subject of Kanani’s charge that “the US is giving full assistance to a terrorist sect.”
At the urging of Washington and the UN, Albania agreed in 2013 to accept MEK members from Iraq; thousands of them eventually settled in the Balkan nation.
The statement said, “This criminal organization keeps playing a role as one of America’s tools in carrying out terrorist acts, cyberattacks” against Iran.
The MEK supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1979, but soon developed a rift with the new government and launched an effort to topple it.
The 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War saw the MEK support Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
