Iran rebuked the French government and shut down a French cultural center in Tehran after the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a series of cartoons ridiculing the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday it was reviewing all French cultural activities in Iran and had suspended the French Institute for Research in Tehran in response to the caricatures of the top cleric.
France’s Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, dismissed the outrage and said Iran “practices violence against its own population” and, unlike France, doesn’t have freedom of the press, according to an interview she gave to news channel LCI TV on Thursday.