The Iranian Executive has “categorically” denied this Tuesday the “unfounded and malicious” accusations launched by French authorities about the alleged involvement of Tehran in a cyberattack against supermarket cooling systems in France that would have caused the loss of tons of food products in the country.
In a statement released on social media, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed its rejection of “the worn-out policy of level accusations against Iran” and has emphasized that these complaints have the “obvious aim” “to divert public attention from France’s destructive policies toward Iran and the Middle East”.
The diplomatic portfolio has described the French position as “a highly irresponsible and absurd attempt to damage Iran’s image and hinder its relations with other nations, whose only purpose is to please the United States and the Zionist regime: the greatest violators of International Law at a global level”.
According to Foreign Affairs, Paris “does nothing more than project its own failures” by making these “groundless accusations against Tehran”, including “its inability to meet the demands of its own citizens and its lack of response to systemic administrative weaknesses”.
In this regard, the Ministry has mocked, stating that French authorities “in fact, seem unable even to manage the temperature of their own refrigerators, and yet they still intend to shift the blame to ‘foreign actors’ through these wild accusations”, while also urging the French Government to “stop squandering enormous sums of money on interference in the affairs of other nations” and “to allocate those resources to meeting the needs for subsistence and education of its own population”.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also stressed that Tehran “will not hesitate to take all necessary and appropriate measures to safeguard its national interests and its security against such unlawful foreign actions”, and has called on France to respect its “international obligations”.
These statements have been accompanied by the intervention of the Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi, who on his social networks has insisted that “the French Government is blaming others for its failures” by being “unable to manage even the refrigerators, and much less to address the complaints of its population”.
"Yes, Iran is powerful. But, unlike France, we do not exercise our power by supporting massacres in Gaza or by bombing schools and hospitals", Araqchi added in the same message, raising the tone of the criticism against Paris.
The previous day, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office reported the opening of proceedings against the alleged person responsible for the Iranian group Shahid Kaveh, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, for his alleged participation in the cyberattack recorded in October that disconnected the cold systems of several French supermarkets and led to the deterioration of large quantities of food.
"The cybercrime unit of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office opens a judicial investigation on charges of fraudulent attacks against an automated data processing system by an organized group and damage caused by dangerous means to persons by an organized group", stated the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, before specifying that "these two crimes are aggravated by the circumstance of having been committed with the aim of serving a foreign power, in this case Iran".
Subsequently, the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, also pointed to Tehran as responsible and attributed to Iran the "responsibility for this attack". "This is an attack of a magnitude and aggressiveness unprecedented", he warned, after the French Government convened the Iranian ambassador in Paris to deliver him a formal complaint in line with these accusations.