TEHRAN, 3 November 2005 — Iran’s new government is replacing some 40 of its most senior diplomats posted abroad in a massive overhaul of the country’s diplomatic service, the foreign minister announced yesterday.

The move comes just months after the shock presidential election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and amid escalating tensions between Iran and the West over its nuclear program.

“The missions of some 40 ambassadors or heads of mission will come to an end from now until the end of the year (March 2006), and after the designation of replacements they should in principle continue to work for the Foreign Ministry,” Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying by Iranian news agencies.

Ahmadinejad’s victory led to concerns of a purge of key institutions, although the official IRNA news agency quoted Mottaki as describing the changes as “normal”. He said several of the diplomats were close to or had asked for retirement.

Several of the diplomats being changed are seen as having been close to either the former reformist government or more moderate conservative forces and were engaged in the lengthy nuclear talks with Britain, France and Germany.

Western diplomats said that some of those being changed had been involved in secret contacts with the United States following the US invasion of Afghanistan that continued until shortly after the invasion of Iraq.

Those set to go include Iran’s ambassadors in London, Paris, Berlin, Geneva and Kuala Lumpur. Tehran’s ambassador in London, Mohammad Hossein Adeli, has only served for a year. However Mottaki said one of Iran’s most prominent diplomats, UN envoy Mohammad Javad Zarif, was not immediately being replaced.

Meanwhile, Iran allowed UN nuclear inspectors to visit the sensitive military site of Parchin for a second time as it boosts cooperation to ward off a possible referral to the UN Security Council.

Ollie Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s deputy director general for safeguards, and two other IAEA inspectors “went Tuesday to Parchin,” a diplomat close to the UN watchdog told AFP. The inspectors took “environmental samples,” which are swipes to see if traces of radioactive particles can be found that would prove the presence of nuclear material. “If there is any inconsistency (nuclear particles) found, then the IAEA would have to raise the matter with Iran,” the diplomat said.

Diplomats said yesterday Iran will process a new batch of uranium at its Isfahan atomic plant beginning next week, despite pressure from the United States and European Union to halt all sensitive nuclear work.

“Beginning next week, the Iranians will start a new phase of uranium conversion at Isfahan. They will begin feeding a new batch of uranium into the plant,” a European diplomat familiar with the result of inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

In another development, a small bomb exploded outside the offices of British Petroleum and British Airways in Tehran yesterday, causing some damage but no casualties, police said.

British-Iranian diplomatic relations are experiencing a rough patch, with Tehran obstructing British imports and accusing London of fomenting Arab separatist bomb attacks this year in the southwestern oil province of Khuzestan.

“It may be that today’s bombing ... was a response to the anti-Iranian stance taken by some countries,” Deputy Interior Ministry Ali Ahmadi told the ILNA labor news agency.

Britain has taken a lead role in trying to persuade Iran to stop making atomic fuel, which Washington fears could be used in nuclear weapons, and has accused Iran of aiding Iraqi rebels.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has denounced a recent call by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Israel’s destruction, said yesterday there was no intention to invade Iran or threaten it militarily.

“What we are however saying is that the Iranian government has got to understand that the international community simply will not put up with their continued breach of the proper and normal standards of behavior we expect of a member of the United Nations,” Blair told Parliament.

In Tehran, police spokesman Mehdi Ahmadi said a hand-made bomb had exploded, breaking windows but not hurting anyone. An employee at the building in a busy Tehran street said the device had gone off in a rubbish bin near a 10th-floor lift.

“It was like the previous time ... The glass entrance door of BP was smashed and the BP office has been evacuated,” he said. A British Airways spokesman in London attributed the blast to a “percussion device ... designed to create more noise than damage”. He said staff at BA’s franchise partner BMED, which operates daily flights between Tehran and London, were working as normal.