TEHRAN – Iran on Sunday criticized a recent meeting between the French president and instigators of recent riots in the Islamic Republic, calling Emmanuel Macron’s comments after the encounter “regrettable and shameful”.
Macron on Friday met with four agent provocateurs, all of them women, who used the death in September of Mahsa Amini to encourage riots in Iran.
The meeting was “a flagrant violation of France’s international responsibilities in the fight against terrorism and violence”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.
“We consider that France favors these sinister phenomena,” he added.
U.S.-based Masih Alinejad, who for years has led a campaign encouraging denigration of the Islamic dress code, and is broadly known to be in the pay of the CIA, were among those at the meeting.
Alluding to Alinejad, Kanaani said it was “surprising that the president of a country that stands for freedom would degrade himself by meeting” her, stating that she had “tried to spread hate and carry out violent and terrorist acts in Iran and against Iran’s foreign diplomatic missions”.
“Macron’s declarations of support for this so-called revolution led by these people” were “regrettable and shameful”, Kanaani said.
The spokesman also lambasted the German chancellor over his recent stance against the Islamic Republic and his support for riots in Iran as “meddlesome, provocative and undiplomatic”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had used his weekly video podcast to express support both for rioters in Iran and for further EU sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Kanaani said the so-called human rights advocates have forgotten their “dark record” against the honorable people of Iran with their “blind and inhumane” support for the Saddam regime, pointing out the former Iraqi dictator’s eight-year war on the Islamic Republic.
They also used human rights as a “tool for political games” by supporting cruel sanctions imposed on Iran after the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as well as keeping silent on acts of terror by Daesh, the latest of which was the terrorist attack in Shiraz, he added.
Kanaani said that the will of the Islamic Republic is confronting oppression and defending the oppressed.
However, Germany, presenting itself as a defender of human rights, evades its international responsibility to respect the sovereignty of countries, and provides refuge for terrorist and separatist groups opposing the Islamic Republic, he added.
The spokesman also rebuked Germany for adopting a “selective and dual approach” against the crimes of the child-killing Zionist regime in all parts of the world, including Palestine.
Kanaani called on the German officials to bring rationality back to the atmosphere of cooperation and prevent a further mess in bilateral relations with Iran, stressing that respect and mutual interests are the sole way to enduring cooperation.