Iran’s ambassador to Georgia says he wants to help the two nations “know each other better.” Mission accomplished, though maybe not in the way he had imagined.
Ambassador Ali Moujani, a historian, chose to illustrate the “differing histories” between Georgia and Iran by choosing Queen Ketevan, a Christian monarch whom Persia’s Safavid ruler Shah Abbas I tortured and executed in 1624 for refusing to convert to Islam.
On September 25, the eve of Ketevan’s feast day. Moujani posted a photo of himself on Facebook outside the Iranian Embassy, where an image of the queen was projected onto the facade.
He said he would soon share preliminary findings based on sources in Iran and Georgia, and stressed this would be a personal historian’s view rather than an official position. A “new reading” of such stories, he wrote in Georgian, could help the two nations “know each other better.”
by RFE/RL – Tbilisi Rebukes Iranian Envoy Over Social Media Post On Canonized Georgian Queen
