New Delhi: Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, will not attend the BRICS Parliamentary Forum in Delhi next week, the Iranian embassy said, citing “certain unforeseen circumstances”.Its announcement comes as there have been concerns that US-Israeli attacks on Iran could resume, with days before a close election in Israel in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could lose power, and before next month’s US midterm election in which war-linked high prices have sparked voter anger.Ghalibaf, the Iranian embassy in Delhi said on Saturday (October 24), will not attend the BRICS Parliamentary Forum between the presiding officers of BRICS member parliaments “due to certain unforeseen circumstances”.Iran will however send a delegation to the Forum in keeping with its commitment towards “active and effective participation at the highest levels in the summits and meetings of this grouping”, the embassy said.The delegation will continue holding dialogue and consultations with its counterparts in order to expand and deepen bilateral as well as multilateral cooperation, particularly over parliamentary relations, the embassy added.It also thanked India for its “gracious hospitality and the arrangements made to host this meeting”.As war clouds appear to once gather again in West Asia, Tehran has warned that it has learned important military lessons from the war that began with US and Israeli attacks on February 28, indicating in recent days that it could expand targets to include infrastructure such as undersea cables and data centres.For its part the US is sending more military assets to the region, including a third aircraft carrier and thousands of troops, to join the largest force of American warships and aircraft in West Asia in decades.And as for Tel Aviv, Danny Citrinowicz, a researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and a former Iran specialist in Israel’s military and intelligence services, told the Associated Press that “Netanyahu wants to attack Iran, that’s not even a question.” A clear Netanyahu victory in the October 27 election means an attack is almost guaranteed, he said.Mediators, meanwhile, have been trying to bring Washington and Tehran back to formal negotiations. Ghalibaf was notably the lead negotiator for Iran in rare direct talks with the US earlier this year.Scheduled over Monday and Tuesday, the Forum will revolve around the theme ‘Fostering Parliaments for People-Centric Development’.It is the final event scheduled under India’s BRICS chairship, which culminated last month in the annual summit. Though the meetings prior to the summit failed to produce joint statements due to friction between bloc members Iran and the United Arab Emirates – which find themselves on opposing sides of the ongoing West Asian crisis – the summit itself produced a joint statement that did not name either side.Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in the lead up to the summit had in phone conversations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for BRICS to play what he called an “independent role” in safeguarding regional peace and halting attacks on Iran.Incidentally, Iran Air managing director Taher Abdolhay last week told the media that his airline has been unable to receive permission from India and Singapore to transport medicines to Iran, following which The Wire reported that New Delhi has not allowed Iranian aircraft to collect medicines from India despite their requests for it in view of US sanctions.With inputs from AP.