Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s Jan. 14-15 visit to Iran was considered highly productive by officials of both nations. It deepened a relationship that already involved regular, high-level interactions between the leaders of both nations, and laid the basis “to expand substantive cooperation in a variety of areas,” as Jaishankar summed it up in his joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Dr. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
Jaishankar noted that this was his first visit to Iran after its membership in the BRICS-Plus had been approved, a decision which “particularly pleased” India, he said, since India had been “a strong advocate” of Iran joining that group of nations.
Rabid Anglo-American geopoliticians who for decades have sought to turn Iran into a pariah state, sanction its people to death, and now openly call for the U.S. and U.K. to attack it militarily, now might need to consider that India, as well as Russia and China, reject that approach.
“Iran and India are united by our deep cultural, literary and linguistic ties,” Jaishankar stated. The two foreign ministers discussed increasing people-to-people exchanges between their countries, he told the press conference, and announced that “the Government of India has decided to include Farsi as one of the nine classical languages of India in our New Education Policy.”
