“Catholic Armenians, in line with the international community, express their concern over the imposition of new sanctions that affect all Iranians, including religious minorities,” the statement issued on Monday by the Armenian-Catholic church in Tehran reads.

The members of the Catholic Armenian community of Iran will be affected by the cruel US sanctions against the country, like their fellow Iranians, the statement adds.

The statement emphasizes that the claims made by some US officials saying that rights of religious minorities are violated and there is a lack of freedom to perform religious rites are ‘biased and unfounded’.

It adds that in Iran Catholic Armenians freely express their religious beliefs and perform their religious rites.

It also condemns the opportunistic US approach to the rights of minorities in Iran, while the rights of people of color in their own country are violated.

The statement, at the end, calls for peace and co-existence among the followers of different religions as a demand from God, along with preserving the country’s independence and peace for all.

Metropolitan Hilarion made the remarks in Sunday in meeting with the chairman of Iran’s Islamic Culture and Relations Organizations  Abuzar Ebrahimi Torkaman who is also the co-chairman of the Joint Russian- dialogue between Orthodoxy and Islam.

The meeting was held with Iranian Cultural Mission to Russia Kahraman Suleymani and the secretary for interreligious relations of the DECR priest Dimitry Safonov in attendance.

The two sides noted the good nature of relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Islamic community of Iran, which have been counted for more than 20 years.

It was pointed out the importance of academic contacts between the two religious communities. A number of other issues of mutual interest were also touched upon in the conversation.

The parties discussed the results of the last meeting of the joint commission on dialogue, which was held in May 2018 in Tehran where various aspects of the attitude of Orthodoxy and Islam to the environmental problems were discussed.

Torkaman arrived in Moscow at the invitation of the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Medinsky to participate in the week of Iranian culture in Russia which starts today in Moscow.