Iran warns France over ‘insulting’ Khamenei cartoons

PARIS: Iran warned France on Wednesday of consequences after satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons depicting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Tehran deemed to be insulting.

The weekly had published dozens of cartoons ridiculing the highest religious and political figure in the Islamic republic as part of a competition it launched in December in support of the three-month-old protest movement.

“The insulting and indecent act of a French publication in publishing cartoons against the religious and political authority will not go without an effective and decisive response,” tweeted Iran´s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

“We will not allow the French government to go beyond its bounds. They have definitely chosen the wrong path,” he added, without spelling out the consequences. Seen by supporters as a champion of freedom of speech and by critics as needlessly provocative, Charlie Hebdo´s style is controversial even within France.

The issue contained a variety of images depicting Khamenei and fellow clerics. Other cartoons pointed to the authorities´ use of capital punishment as a tactic to quell the protests. “It was a way to show our support for Iranian men and women who risk their lives to defend their freedom against the theocracy that has oppressed them since 1979,” Charlie Hebdo´s director Laurent Sourisseau, known as Riss, wrote in an editorial.

All the cartoons published “have the merit of defying the authority that the supposed supreme leader claims to be, as well as the cohort of his servants and other henchmen,” he added.

Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP and former minister loyal to President Emmanuel Macron, described Iran´s response as an “interference attempt and threat” to Charlie Hebdo. “Let it be perfectly clear: the repressive and theocratic regime in Tehran has nothing to teach France,” she said.