Spokesman Pushes to Promote Iran’s Public Diplomacy Relations

Kanaani held separate meetings with his counterparts from the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Ethiopia, and Brazil on the sidelines of a BRICS meeting in Moscow.

The event, titled ‘consultations among the heads of information departments of BRICS Ministries of Foreign Affairs’, was held in Russia’s capital on July 12.

In one of the meetings, Kanaani and Maria Zakharova, the director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, talked about the cordial and constructive ties between the two countries.

They also discussed plans to boost media and cultural cooperation as well as public diplomacy interaction between the two countries.

In a separate meeting, Ethiopian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nebiyu Tedla denounced Western countries for the instrumental use of human rights and international structures related to the field.

For his part, Kanaani underlined the cooperation between BRICS member states against hate-mongering and lies disseminated in the media aimed at distorting the image of the independent countries in the world, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s website reported.

In another meeting, Kanaani and UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson and Director of the Ministry's Strategic Communications Department Afra al-Hameli stressed the need to maintain the achievements in the two countries’ relations and urged that cultural and media ties as well as people-to-people relations in both countries should be promoted.

Kanaani also echoed remarks by Iran’s President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian about prioritizing relations with the neighboring countries as the main approach in the country’s foreign policy in the new administration.

In another get-together, Kanaani and Brazilian Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson Joel Sampaio highlighted the cooperation capacity between the two countries in the cultural, media, and public diplomacy fields and stressed that the opportunities should be utilized to boost ties within the framework of the BRICS.

Russia, as the rotating president of the BRICS, will hold various events in 2024 on a range of subjects and host officials from the bloc’s member states for talks on promoting and expanding cooperation among the BRICS countries.