Concerning a protest video, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran cancels his visit to India
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, was expected to join counterparts from other countries at the Raisina Dialogue
According to people familiar with the matter, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, has canceled a trip to India, ostensibly because a video promoting a government-backed geopolitics conference featured a brief clip of protesting Iranian women alongside images of President Ebrahim Raisi.
There had been no official announcement from India or Iran about Amir-planned Abdollahian’s visit to participate in the Raisina Dialogue, an annual conference hosted by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and the Ministry of External Affairs. Amir-Abdollahian, on the other hand, was expected to join his counterparts from other countries for the event in New Delhi on March 2-4.
ORF released the Raisina Dialogue promotional video online a few weeks ago. The one-minute and fifty-second video, which includes images of several world leaders and global events such as the Ukraine war, includes less than two seconds of footage of Iranian women cutting their hair during protests.
According to the people cited above, the Iranian embassy raised the issue with the Indian side and requested that this footage be removed from the video. When this did not happen, the Iranian side canceled the foreign minister’s visit, according to the sources.
Indian officials had not responded to the development. Calls and messages to several Iranian embassy officials went unanswered.
During his first visit to India in June of last year, Amir-Abdollahian discussed with his Indian counterparts the controversial remarks made by two former BJP spokespersons about Prophet Mohammed. He then spoke about the “negative atmosphere” created by some people’s remarks, though the Iranian foreign ministry later removed some of his remarks from a readout on its website.
The Indian government has remained deafeningly silent on the nationwide protests in Iran that have erupted since the death last September of Masha Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman detained by morality police for violating the country’s dress code by not wearing an appropriate head covering.
In November of last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voted to create an independent international fact-finding mission to look into alleged human rights abuses in Iran during the protests over the death of Amini. India was one of the 16 nations that voted against the resolution and chose to abstain.
Even though India stopped buying Iranian oil in mid-2019 due to threats of secondary sanctions from the US, the two countries are collaborating on the development of the strategic Chabahar port, for which the Indian government has allocated 100 crores in the 2023-24 budget.
Iran, which was previously one of India’s top three crude suppliers, has pushed the Indian side to resume oil imports as well as accelerate efforts to develop Chabahar, including the construction of a new railway line connecting to the regional rail network.
