Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized Russian and British Ambassadors to Tehran for the picture published on the Russian Embassy Twitter account.


“I saw an extremely inappropriate picture today. Need I remind all that Aug. 2021 is neither Aug. 1941 nor Dec. 1943. The Iranian people have shown—including during the JCPOA talks—that their destiny can NEVER be subject to decisions in foreign embassies or by foreign powers,” Zarif wrote in a tweet.

The Twitter account of Russia’s Embassy in Iran published a photo yesterday, showing the new British Ambassador to Tehran Simon Shercliff sitting with Russia’s Ambassador Levan Dzhagaryan on the upstairs in the porch of Russian Embassy building.

The location and setting reminded the 1943 Tehran conference where the then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and then Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin sit at the same place for photo opportunity.

The conference is widely notorious among Iranians and is considered as an aggression and humiliation of Iranian identity and sovereignty. The photo was broadly criticized by all walks of life in Iranian media and social networks.