On Wednesday, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced the severance of relations with Iran, requesting all Iranian diplomatic and technical administrative personnel to leave the country within 24 hours.
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Albania's move follows an investigation into the mid-July cyber-attack on official Albanian government websites, for which it accused Iran of being responsible. According to the Iranian government, such accusations are "unfounded."
The Albanian Prime Minister said the measure of the severing relation "has a direct proportionality with the seriousness and dangerousness of the cyber-attack, which threatened to paralyze public services, bring down systems and steal state data."
For its part, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said, "The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the countries targeted by cyber-attacks against its own critical infrastructures, and rejects and condemns any use of cyberspace as a tool to attack the critical infrastructures of other countries."
Shortly after Albania's announcement, the U.S. National Security Council issued a statement saying that the U.S. government would take steps to hold Iran accountable for the cyberattack.
Iran has considered "the existence of a pre-designed plan to create a political atmosphere against the republic of Iran," given the U.S. government's statement and the prompt reaction of the Israeli media.
The public services portal e-Albania suddenly stopped working on July 15, as did several government websites, such as the Prime Minister's website.