The Iranians Did Not Express Any Disappointment to us with India’s Positions. They were Very Positive.

Congress leader Salman Khurshid, was among those who attended the funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran in early July. He was invited personally and was also representing the Congress party.

“I saw a lot of resilience and confidence in Iran. There was no sense of victimhood,” he said to Sidharth Bhatia in a discussion.

“There weren’t policemen everywhere. It looked like very relaxed, but an extremely disciplined populace. Despite what people say about women not being involved in public life in Iran, most of the photographers who were around us were women.

“Very well spoken, very elegant in the English language. And I saw, I saw women moving easily on two wheelers, et cetera, riding pillion, with or without hijab.” He said the visiting delegations were “not shown any destruction of property”

Khurshid, a former External Affairs Minister, said “not once did they say that you could have sent an official delegation of a higher level.”But, he said, “the Indian prime minister visiting Israel on the eve of the war being unleashed was completely, completely wrong.”

“The point really is for future time to take stock of our foreign policy, because we will hit a crisis once again. For us to miss the opportunity to rework a relationship with Iran will be a very sad thing.”