TIRANA, September 19 /ATA/ During his stay in New York, Prime Minister Edi Rama and former ambassador Richard Grenell were guests on “Wake Up America” of the American television Newsmax.
In answer to question about the cyber attack from Iran, Rama said that, “I want to make it crystal clear that it is not me who has accused Iran, but we have evidence, based on a very fine work of the legal expertise of the Microsoft super team for detection of threats, as well as the super team of American specialized agencies, and it has been confirmed that behind this attack is Iran, the state, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has sponsored 4 groups, one of which is one of the main cyber terror groups that is behind the attacks against Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kuwait and so on. So it’s not an accusation, it’s a fact.”
On the other hand, Rama emphasized, “We understood that it was time to cut off any kind of relationship with this regime because we could not currently allow the embassy to continue to be in the middle of the capital and work as an operational center to harm our country.”
Speaking about NATO’s Article 5, which says that an attack against one is an attack against all and as a member of NATO this is an attack, Rama said that, “It is true, but at the same time we have preferred first of all to build, not just awareness, but to build an alliance of support, because what we need now is to accelerate all our plans to build a modern cyber defense, because even after mass attack on July 15, we had another, and we are prepared for more to come. Because everyone knows that this regime is engaged in these types of activities around the world, and it is quite disturbing that this happens, while the common defense response is still not where it should be.”
When asked if the administration of American President Biden should negotiate with the Iranian regime, while this regime carries out cyber attacks, or kills women and people of the LGBT community, Rama said that, “It is not up to me to say because Albania is an ally. Of course, we know our position and we know that the burden is not on our shoulders to make very big decisions, but since we lived in a very similar regime for years, which was not a religious totalitarian regime, but it was an atheist totalitarian regime, I can say from experience that dealing in our way, which means in the way of democratic countries with such regimes, does not seem like a very far-sighted vision to me”./r.e/p.s./
