French town pulls garbage advert depicting Khamenei after Tehran's outcry
A French mayor has cancelled an advertising campaign on sorting garbage which lampooned Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, citing safety concerns after Iran decried it as an insult.
A French mayor has cancelled an advertising campaign on sorting garbage which lampooned Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, citing safety concerns after Iran decried it as an insult.
The campaign on the back of municipal buses features Khamenei alongside North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin under the slogan "Don’t forget to sort your waste".
Far-right Mayor Robert Ménard of the southern French city of Béziers had spearheaded the initiative but announced the removal of the adverts on Thursday.
Describing the move as a precautionary measure, Ménard told AFP: "We take this very seriously. I don't want there to be the slightest problem, for example, for our bus drivers."
"We've run lots of campaigns, but they never achieve anything. Nobody even notices them. This one, at least, everyone noticed," he added.
Majid Nili, an aide to Iran’s Foreign Minister, announced Thursday that the Iranian Embassy in Paris has lodged an official complaint against the campaign, which he described as an insult to the Islamic Republic, hate speech and disrespect for Iran's cultural values.
Nili further said that the embassy had demanded what he called an appropriate response from the French government, calling for measures to prevent provocations in the future.
The campaign was launched on January 4, 2025, as part of an initiative to encourage residents to participate in waste sorting.
Since then, images of the municipal buses have been shared widely on social media platforms, including the city’s official Facebook page with the caption: "To start the year off right, think about sorting your rubbish."
French media earlier quoted Ménard saying, "These are scoundrels, non-recyclable waste. One wages an unjust war on his neighbors and sends his army to die, another imprisons his population and the last treats women worse than doormats while eliminating his opponents."
In his New Year’s statement, he also expressed solidarity with the women of Iran, saying: "I am also thinking of those women who, in Iran and elsewhere, refuse to be confined behind a veil, a prison of fabric."
