A detained Iranian employee of the British embassy has been charged with harming Iran’s national security, his lawyer said Saturday, in a move certain to increase tension with Europe.

Iran has been holding nine local members of the British embassy staff on accusations of fomenting unrest. All but one has now been released and he has been chanrged with “acting against national security.”

His lawyer confirmed him to journalists as Hossein Rassam, a political analyst at the embassy, and said he expects a trial soon. The Foreign Office could not confirm that an embassy employee had been charged and said it was “seeking urgentclarification from the Iranian authorities.”

Meanwhile, with words likely to add futher fuel to the fire, a top aide to Iran’s supreme leader called the country’s main opposition figure a US agent and said that he should be tried for committing crimes against the nation.

While hard-line figures had previously demanded Mir Hossein Mousavi be prosecuted for describing Iran’s June 12 elections fraudulent and leading demonstrations afterward, the comments in an editorial was the first public declaration that the opposition leader was a foreign agent.

Iran’s leadership has been trying to erase any lingering doubts about the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election by portraying the unrest as sparked by foreign meddling.

“It has to be asked whether the actions of (Mousavi and his supporters) are in response to instructions of American authorities,” said Hossein Shariatmadari in an editorial appearing in the conservative daily Kayhan. Shariatmadari doesn’t hold a government position but is the powerful director of the Kayhan newspaper group and a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He added that Mousavi was trying to “escape punishment for murdering innocent people, holding riots, cooperating with foreigners and acting as America’s fifth column inside the country.”

He called for Mousavi and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami to be tried in court for “horrible crimes and treason,” adding that there were “undeniable documents; proving Mousavi’s foreign links.

Even before the news, there had been calls in Europe for tougher action against Tehran. Britain is pressing for members of the European Union to pull their ambassadors out of Tehran to protest the staffers’ arrests.

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