Portugal has suspended issuing visas to Iranian citizens over security concerns, Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said Tuesday (July 16th).
"We suspended them for security reasons," Santos Silva told a parliamentary committee without giving further details, the Lusa press agency reported.
The minister said he would not elaborate on the reasoning in public, though he later said the suspension had "nothing to do with the quality of bilateral relations between Portugal and Tehran", AFP reported.
Portugal denied Wednesday it was refusing visas to Iranians for "political" reasons, and insisted the measure was "temporary".
The move came against a background of mounting tension between Iran and the West after Tehran breached a limit for uranium enrichment set in a 2015 nuclear deal.
"This decision is not political," a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday.
"It is not related to security conditions in Iran or any other aspect of an institutional or political nature," the ministry added in a statement.
