ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar said on Wednesday his country would deepen bilateral ties with Iran and work with its new administration under Masoud Pezeshkian, who won a snap presidential election on July 5.
The elections were called after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19. Pezeshkian, a reformist and cardiac surgeon, won decisively with almost three million more votes than Saeed Jalili, a hard-liner and former nuclear negotiator.
“The Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister conveyed that Pakistan looked forward to working closely with the new political administration in Iran to further deepen Pak-Iran bilateral cooperation,” the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement after Dar, who also holds the portfolio of his country’s foreign ministry, held a meeting with Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani in Jeddah.
Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar (right) meets Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on August 7, 2024. (Pakistan foreign office)
Dar is visiting the Saudi city for a special session of the OIC convened on requests by Iran and Palestine following the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh last week. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president when he was killed.
“The Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister expressed Pakistan’s deep concern and anguish at the despicable attack in Tehran that led to the assassination of the Chief of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh,” the foreign office statement added.
On Wednesday, in his address at the OIC session, Dar cautioned Iran and Palestine against fulfilling what he described as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s designs for a “wider war” in the Middle East in avenging Haniyeh’s assassination.
Almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli military campaign in Gaza triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
