In a fresh row over the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon, Iran has summoned France’s envoy on Wednesday to protest against “insulting” cartoons published in the magazine depicting the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The protest comes after the weekly had published dozens of cartoons about Khamenei as part of a competition launched last month to support anti-government protests in Iran sparked by the death of a 22-year-old girl named Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police, reported news agency Reuters.
French ambassador Nicolas Roche was summoned on Wednesday, said Iran’s foreign ministry, according to the Guardian report. “The Islamic Republic of Iran does not accept insulting its Islamic, religious, and national sanctities and values in any way,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told the French envoy, according to state TV.
Surrounded by the worst legitimacy crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s religious leaders have accused its foreign foes of fuelling the anti-government mass protests in a bid to destabilise the country.
Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian earlier on Wednesday warned that the “offensive and indecent” move would receive a firm response from Tehran. We won’t allow the French government to go too far. They’ve definitely chosen the wrong path,” Amirabdollahian tweeted.
On its part, the magazine said the caricatures were published in a special edition to mark the anniversary of a deadly attack on its Paris office on Jan 7, 2015 by Islamist militants, after the weekly had published cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed.
The magazine pointed out that the competition was aimed “to support the struggle of Iranians who are fighting for their freedom”.
The latest issue depicts winners of a recent cartoon contest in which participants were asked to draw the most offensive caricatures of Khamenei, who has held Iran’s highest office since 1989, as per the Guardian report.
One of the participants depicted a turbaned cleric reaching for a hangman’s noose as he drowns in blood, while another cartoon shows Khamenei clinging to a giant throne above the raised fists of protesters. Others depict more vulgar and sexually explicit scenes.
“It was a way to show our support for Iranian men and women who risk their lives to defend their freedom against the theocracy that has oppressed them since 1979,” Charlie Hebdo’s director, Laurent Sourisseau, known as Riss, noted in his editorial as per the Guardian report.
All the cartoons published had “the merit of defying the authority that the supposed supreme leader claims to be, as well as the cohort of his servants and other henchmen”, he added.