Bachmann camp clarifies statement on Iran

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Aides to Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann said the Minnesota congresswoman was speaking in theory about not allowing a U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Bachmann's campaign team issued a statement after she said a Bachmann presidency wouldn't allow "an American embassy in Iran," Politico reported Wednesday.

The United States has had no diplomatic ties with Iran since revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Aides said she was speaking hypothetically in response to Tuesday's attack on the British Embassy and diplomatic residences in Tehran and the British government's decision to evacuate and close the embassy and expel the Iranian diplomatic corps from London.

Bachmann "is fully aware that we do not have an embassy in Iran and have not had one since 1980," the statement said. "She was agreeing with the actions taken by the British to secure their embassy personnel and was speaking in the hypothetical, that if she was President of the United States and if we had an embassy in Iran, she would have taken the same actions as the British."

The statement said her remarks were taken out of context.

"As she has previously stated, President Obama has taken his eye off of Iran, the most significant security threat in the region, and allowed them the luxury of time to move toward obtaining nuclear weapons," the statement said. "She will never allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons that would threaten our ally Israel and the United States."