EU Considers "Further Action" Against Iran

(Brussels, Belgium) With the EU presidency rotating to Sweden, there's a new sheriff in town and he is angry.

Ambassadors from three European Union member states on July 7 visited the Iranian Foreign Ministry to call for the “immediate release” of a British embassy employee, a Swedish EU presidency statement said.

The EU was considering “further action” if the Iranian authorities did not release the employee, one of several British embassy workers arrested following controversial presidential elections in Iran.

"Considering further action" is a diplomatic code phrase which presumably dispatches a team of EU scholars to the university library in search of adjectives and verbs with stronger tsk-tsk effects.

Ironically, in a followup statement, the EU used the word "condemned" in protesting the arrest of French teacher Clotilde Reiss. Evidently the EU means business and Iran should prepare for a verbal joust.