UAE and Iran Leaders Meet at BRICS Summit in Delhi as Media Delegations Watch
UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled and Iranian President Pezeshkian met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Delhi, drawing surprise and relief from both countries' media delegations.
Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met on the sidelines of the BRICS Leaders' Summit in New Delhi, holding a one-on-one discussion. The encounter drew surprise and relief from media delegations of both countries sharing the International Media Centre at Bharat Mandapam.
The two sides have been divided for months over how the conflict in West Asia was phrased in the summit document. India secured a much-anticipated consensus between the UAE and Iran on Saturday, clearing the way for the leaders' meeting.
Relations between the two countries have been strained, with Emirati cities having faced a series of Iranian strikes and Tehran describing the UAE as a proxy of the United States.
The UAE media contingent was the larger of the two, with around 20 people including crews from state-owned Abu Dhabi TV, other news channels and newspaper journalists. The Iranian group was smaller, representing the state-owned IRNA news agency and several other outlets.
Throughout the day, the two groups kept to different sides of the media centre, neither speaking to each other nor about each other. A journalist from a prominent UAE newspaper, who did not wish to be named, said many people had asked how she felt about her Iranian counterparts. She described both sides as professionals doing their work while politicians and leaders do theirs, adding that at a human level none of them would have a problem with each other.
A colleague said he would be happy to exchange pleasantries if someone approached him, noting that the journalists were present because of their countries' ties with India and to talk about that relationship.
While some mediapersons travelled with the leaders of both countries, the Ministry of External Affairs also invited and hosted social media influencers from all BRICS countries for over a week, taking them to Agra and Mumbai.
More than 1,000 journalists were present at the media centre on Saturday, including over 100 visiting from various BRICS countries such as China, Russia and South Africa.