This year, three Iranian diplomats have defected, leaving their posts in protest.  They believe electoral fraud occurred in last year’s disputed Presidential elections in Iran, and they have expressed disgust at the way those asking for more democracy have been treated by the Basij paramilitaries and the forces of the government in the past year.

For the first time today, Iran’s Foreign Ministry commented on the defections.

“Nobody in the Foreign Ministry believes their intentions were political,” said Ramin Mehmanparast, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.  “This can mostly be seen as they preferring their personal interests to the national interest.”

One of the diplomats who defected, Mohammad Reza Heydari, told Fox News that he doesn’t care what the Foreign Ministry spokesman says.  “Only the Iranian people are important to me.”

All three of the diplomats who defected—Heydari, who was Consul General in Norway, Hossein Alizadeh, who was the number two at the Iranian Embassy in Finland, and Farzad Farhangian, who was the Press Attache in Belgium, fought in the Iran-Iraq War.  They considered themselves to be patriots.  And could have finished up their careers in Iran’s foreign service with a relatively comfortable retirement plan.  Instead, they have chosen to start life anew abroad, with uncertainty ahead.  They say they have received threats to their families and have informed the police.

Hossein Alizadeh told Fox News that he would have gladly returned to Iran to speak to the media there freely about what he says was election fraud in Iran last year.  But he said he knows he would not be able to speak freely in Iran.

Alizadeh claims that Iran’s embassies around the world received a document from the Guardian Council the day of the election last year, instructing diplomats not to speak to the media about the subject.

“What did this document indicate?  If your people re-elected President Ahmadinejad with 25 million votes, you should be proud.”

Alizadeh says he is not bothered by Iran’s Foreign Ministry’s response to the defections.  He said they should be asking themselves why diplomats are defecting.  And he says he wants his questions posed to the regime to be answered.

Alizadeh claims that more than a dozen other diplomats have quit, but quietly, without making public statements of dissatisfaction with the regime.

There is talk of a purge of Iranian diplomats who are viewed as disloyal to the regime.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mehmanparast says the tours of the diplomats who defected had ended anyway.  But observers of Iran have remarked it is unusual for the government to comment at all about defections.