The ministry demanded that Iran remove the posts from its missions’ pages and take measures against repeats, Gazeta.uz reported, citing the ministry’s statement. “Uzbekistan values its relations with Iran, built on mutual respect and trust. At the same time our country keeps a principled position on one-sided interpretations of its historical and cultural heritage,” the ministry said.
The posts came from Iran’s embassies in Armenia, China and Zimbabwe and from its mission to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and in the ministry’s assessment treated Samarkand’s heritage one-sidedly and for political purposes. Most of them reacted to Rubio’s video, recorded against the Registan during his visit to Uzbekistan, in which he spoke of the city’s role in world trade.
“Uzbekistan values its relations with Iran, built on mutual respect and trust. At the same time our country keeps a principled position on one-sided interpretations of its historical and cultural heritage,” the ministry said.
“The place where you are standing is part of Persian civilisation and architecture,” one Iranian mission wrote on X, in Gazeta.uz’s Russian rendering. The same post criticised Rubio’s speech at the Acropolis in Athens on 7 October, in which he recalled the Persian king Xerxes and the Spartans and accused Iran’s leadership of a cult of death. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei had answered that speech on X on 8 October.
The ministry told the ambassador that the heritage of Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and other historic cities of Uzbekistan is an inseparable part of many centuries of cultural development, and that Samarkand’s historical appearance reflects the centuries-long history of the Uzbek people and its traditions of statehood. Material on the official accounts of diplomatic missions, it said, must meet the principles of mutual respect and trust and must not politicise historical and cultural questions.