Baghdad, July 20 (RHC)-- Iran’s Foreign Minister says the bellicose behavior displayed by the United States and Israel toward the countries in West Asia is inherent to the duo, and they cannot alter this reality by adopting makeshift policies.
Mohammad Javad Zarif made the remarks on Sunday in a meeting in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, with Hadi al-Ameri, the head of the Fatah (Conquest) Alliance in Iraq’s Parliament.
“The hostility that America and the Zionist regime show toward regional countries is inherent to them,” Iran’s top diplomat said, adding, “Some people think that this reality can be changed through adoption of certain policies, but it won’t happen.”
Even other countries in the region, Zarif said, cannot befriend Israel, because the regime will eventually show its belligerent nature toward them one day.
“We know that what is happening to you or Syria and Lebanon is due to this resistance [against the U.S. and Israel] as the Islamic Republic of Iran is also under pressure because of such [similar] positions,” Zarif told the Iraqi lawmaker.
Iran's top diplomat called on officials of these four countries to notice that they have all been targeted by the U.S. and Israel, and it is not an issue related to just one country. “Regional states should comprehend this reality that they can thwart such pressure if they work together,” Zarif emphasized.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Zarif said pursuing the case of the assassination of the Iranian and Iraqi commanders of the anti-terrorism fight in Iraq, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, is on the agenda of his Baghdad visit.
Pointing to a recent report by Agnes Callamard, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, on the assassination of Soleimani and Muhandis, the top Iranian diplomat emphasized that this case can be pursued at an international level.
Iranian foreign minister pays tribute to assassinated commanders of the anti-terrorism fight in Iraq upon his arrival in the country’s capital. General Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was assassinated in a terrorist US airstrike near the Baghdad International Airport on January 3rd, along with Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and a number of their companions.
Both commanders were profoundly popular due to their key role in eliminating the US-sponsored Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
The senior UN human rights investigator said earlier this month that the assassination of Soleimani was an “unlawful” killing in violation of international law.
A senior UN human rights investigator says the United States’ assassination of top Iranian commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad was an “unlawful” killing in violation of the international law.
Callamard said the Pentagon has failed to provide sufficient evidence of an ongoing or imminent attack against its interests to justify the drone strike on General Soleimani's convoy as it left the airport.
“Absent an actual imminent threat to life, the course of action taken by the US was unlawful," she wrote in a report.
