SAEDNEWS: The government newspaper responded to the reactions regarding the President’s absence in the leaders’ group photo at the Shanghai summit.
According to Saed News, during the presence of our country’s President at the Shanghai summit in the city of Tianjin, China, some users on social networks wrote: Why did President Pezeshkian not attend the opening dinner of the summit? They claimed that after this dinner, the leaders of the summit took a group photo, but our country’s President, due to arriving late or poor time management by the Presidential Office, was not present either at this dinner or in the subsequent photo.
Last Sunday, after the arrival of the President’s delegation to China, the Public Relations Office of the Presidency responded to these rumors, saying:
“We had just arrived in the city of Tianjin, and after arriving, the President attended another meeting at his residence. Moreover, the President’s flight schedule was such that we entered the city with a delay, and the travel planning was not arranged in a way that we were supposed to participate in this dinner at all.”
Abbasi added:
“The summit has not yet officially started and will officially begin tomorrow (Monday, August 31). The matter of the group photo, which is usually one of the important parts of summits, will take place tomorrow; therefore, we ask the media to follow the news from official sources and not to give credit to rumors that might emerge.”
These rumors come while in 2022 the same discussions were raised regarding the presence of the martyred President Raisi in the leaders’ dinner of the Shanghai summit in the city of Samarkand. At that time, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) explained with the headline “What was the reason for Ayatollah Raisi’s absence in the Shanghai leaders’ dinner?” and wrote:
“The reason for the absence of Iran’s President in this dinner was the emphasis on the protocols of the Islamic Republic of Iran in dinner ceremonies; therefore, Ayatollah Raisi, after participating in the tree-planting memorial ceremony of the summit, went to the Ahl al-Bayt Mosque of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) in the city of Samarkand in order to perform the obligatory prayer and also to be present among the worshipers of the Muslim people of this city.”
