Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
Iranwire – IranWire has obtained a recently-recorded video in which Faezeh Hashemi re-iterates growing alarm over Tehran’s relationship with the Kremlin in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the film, activist and daughter of the late president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warns that by prioritizing close relations with Russia and China, “we are getting closer and closer to becoming a colony: at this moment more a colony of Russia, but in the long run, a colony of both Russia and China.”
Visits to Moscow by diplomats and members of the executive, Faezeh Hashemi added, “have brought us further humiliation, and made us weaker, instead of forming relations that benefit both sides.” Of the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, she said: “We did not condemn this aggression and instead stood by Russia. For Putin’s invasion of Ukraine we blamed the United States, but didn’t blame Putin.”
This is the second intervention known to have been made by Faezeh Hashemi since the start of the invasion on February 24. Earlier she castigated Iran having “auctioned off our national interests to the East” in an apparently closed but recorded meeting. Her latest comments echo concerns also voiced by conservative ex-MP Ali Motahari, who said two weeks ago that in its coverage of the invasion, the IRIB was acting “like a Russian colony”.
Last week the Russian Ambassador to Tehran, Levan Jagarian, gave a press conference in which he instructed the journalists present from ISNA, ILNA, Tasnim and other Iranian government outlets how to report on the invasion: to whit, to use the term “special military operation” instead of “invasion” or “war”. “Our Foreign Ministry did not summon this ambassador to admonish him for such an insolence towards our people and our media,” Faezeh Hashemi says in the video.
By means of another example, Hashemi also raised the case of Mahsa Kamali, a member of the Iranian national women’s futsal team, who was taken to task by the Iranian Football Federation after she wore a T-shirt to a match printed with the words “Stop War”.
“It seems we have become an unpaid lackey of Russia and China,” Hashemi said. “The question is, for how long do we want to pay ransoms to Russian and China because we want to fight the west? For how long we want to pay them ransoms so that they can protect us, because our own people don’t?”
She concluded: “We must have balanced relations with all countries, Western and Eastern. We must respect people’s rights and secure their consent. If we follow this road, there is no need [for obeisance to Russia and China]. But if we don’t, history will remember what a terrible thing we did to our country.”
