The candidates vying to become Iran’s next president have to maintain the level of national cohesion that was obtained under the country’s martyred chief executive Ebrahim Raeisi, a former Indian career diplomat says.
M. K. Bhadrakumar, who used to serve India on diplomatic assignments across three decades, made the remarks to Press TV’s Iran Votes 2024 program on Saturday.
“One good thing that I must state at the outset is the kind of cohesion that Iran had, after a very long time, during the presidency of president Raeisi,” he said of the former senior Iranian official, who was martyred alongside his companions in a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran last month.
Bhadrakumar went on to outline his vision about how Iran’s next president should perform in view of the legacy that has been left behind by Martyr Raeisi.
“I would hope that the candidates, despite their urges to show something unique and independent, will keep in mind the criticality of maintaining this cohesion, the national cohesion, the national unity, and the national consensus,” he said.
“This sort of cohesion is very important for Iran,” Bhadrakumar said, warning that “if national cohesion is not there, outsiders jump in an exploit it.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, he lauded president Raeisi’s foreign policy performance and achievements, citing improvement of the Islamic Republic’s relations with Saudi Arabia as well as significant enhancement of the country’s strategic ties with China and Russia as cases in point.
Still enumerating Raeisi’s foreign policy accomplishments, Bhadrakumar hailed the former president’s way of assigning priority to the Islamic Republic’s relations with its neighbors.
“He (Raeisi) acquitted himself as a person with a very clear-sighted objective for Iran with primacy number one on improving Iran’s relations with its neighbors,” he said.