In a rare moment of unity, Iranian and Israeli hardliners have foiled plans by Daniel Barenboim to take a top German orchestra to Tehran.
The renowned conductor said last week that he was in discussions with Iran for a one-off concert in Tehran with the Berlin Staatskapelle, the orchestra of the Berlin State Opera, where he is musical director.
The plan drew fierce criticism from Israel on the ground that it would give succour to a pariah state. It was rejected by Iran because Barenboim and other members of the orchestra were Israelis and thus “illegitimate artists”.
The opera house had said that the ill-fated exercise in cultural diplomacy had the backing of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, who “supports Daniel Barenboim’s commitment to make music accessible to people beyond any national, religious or ethnic boundaries”.
The planned visit, which comes weeks after the signing of a nuclear deal between Iran and the West, would have marked a thaw in cultural ties with the theocratic Middle Eastern state.
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Miri Regev, the Israeli culture minister, and a member of the right-wing ruling Likud party, said that she would be writing to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to complain.
She accused Barenboim, 72, who has had Israeli citizenship since 1952, of “using culture as a platform for his political views against the state of Israel”.
She wrote on her Facebook page: “In my letter I shall stress that Daniel Barenboim’s appearance in Iran harms Israel’s efforts to prevent the nuclear agreement and gives encouragement to de-legitimisation of Israel.”
Hossein Noushabadi, a spokesman for the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance in Tehran, said: “We do not recognise Israel as a legitimate state and we consider artists associated with Israel as illegitimate too and they have no place in Iran.”
Barenboim has criticised Israeli policies towards Palestinians, claiming that they are “morally abhorrent and strategically wrong”. He riled right-wing groups by founding the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999 with Edward Said, the Palestinian writer. The Spanish-based ensemble includes players from both sides of the Arab- Israeli divide, and from Iran. He also caused controversy in Israel by seeking to perform music by Wagner, the antisemitic German composer, in contravention of an unofficial boycott.