Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations says the United States’ recent assassination of the Islamic Republic’s senior commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani is tantamount to waging a war on the Iranian nation.
“In fact, it was an act of war on the part of the United States against the Iranian people,” Majid Takht-e Ravanchi told CNN’s OutFront program on Friday.
The strike was “a new chapter, which is tantamount to opening a war against Iran,” he reiterated.
“The response for a military action is a military action,” the envoy noted. “By whom? By… when? Where? That is for the future to witness,” he said.
On Friday, US drones struck a convoy carrying Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), on the Baghdad International Airport road.
If the US is in possession of alleged evidence showing that Soleimani “was planning an imminent major attack against American interests, they should show it,” Takht-e Ravanchi said, referring to the accusation used by Washington to try to justify such deadly acts of aggression.
Earlier, the envoy wrote to the United Nations Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, saying the assassination was “by any measure, an obvious example of state terrorism and, as a criminal act, constitutes a gross violation of the fundamental principles of international law.”
He, likewise, reminded that the Islamic Republic reserved all of its rights under international law to take necessary measures in this regard, “in particular in exercising its inherent right to self-defense.”
He reminded the world body that during his service, General Soleimani would provide “a significant role” in helping out regional nations in the face of the most dangerous of terrorist outfits, including the Takfiri Daesh group, at those nations’ own request.
The atrocity, Takht-e Ravanchi wrote, belies Washington’s claim of fighting terrorism in the region, and shows that it is, in fact, battling those who fight terrorism.
Washington’s actions seriously undermine “regional and global efforts in combating international terrorism,” he said and urged the UN to condemn the assassination.
