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The Daily Tar Heel

LONDON (MCT) — The European Union slapped new sanctions on Iranian individuals, companies and organizations Thursday in response to a report alleging that Tehran had pressed ahead with ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

European governments also kept up their condemnation of the ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran by an angry mob of protesters on Tuesday. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have all temporarily recalled their ambassadors from Tehran in solidarity with Britain, which shut down its embassy Wednesday and gave Iranian diplomats in London 48 hours to leave the country.

Meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers approved the addition of 180 Iranian entities to the list of those that have had their assets in Europe frozen and that have been banned from travel in any of the EU’s 27 member states.

The move followed a sharply critical report last month by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog citing evidence that Tehran had pushed ahead with tests aimed at developing an atomic bomb.

But the ministers stopped short of imposing an embargo on Iranian oil, a more drastic step that some European countries have urged.

Among the new names added to the list are individuals or groups associated with Iran’s nuclear program, its state-owned shipping enterprise and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the elite military body that Britain alleges sponsored the attack on its embassy in Tehran.

Tehran denies that it is trying to build an atomic weapon.

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