Reaction of the Deputy Minister of Science to the Closure of the German Institute in Iran
In response to the closure of the DAAD German Academic Exchange Service office in Tehran, the Deputy Minister of Science for International Affairs in Iran attributed it to the reduced interest of European countries in scientific relations with Iran.
Vahid Haddadi Asl, while mentioning the current year’s academic crisis and the pressures from Western countries in student recruitment, said that despite this, Iran has had good activities in the international field in neighboring countries.
He reminded that Iran has no restrictions on establishing scientific relations with European countries except for Israel, and these restrictions are imposed by them. According to Haddadi Asl, a scientific organization like DAAD should not be influenced by such issues.
In October this year, the German Academic Exchange Service expressed solidarity with Iranian students and academics in the protests related to the Women, Life, Freedom movement and strongly condemned the government’s repressive behavior. The scientific and cultural cooperation of European institutions with the Islamic Republic has been consistently affected by restrictive approaches and the arrests of foreign or dual-national academics in Iran over the past 44 years.