LONDON: Israeli and US attacks on Iran in June “inflicted a grievous blow upon international trust and the very prospect of peace in the region,” Iran’s president said on Wednesday.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, the first time he has spoken in a global forum since the 12-day Israel-Iran war over the summer, Masoud Pezeshkian said Israeli and US strikes on his country were a betrayal of diplomacy.
The war saw the assassination of a number of Iran’s highest military and political leaders, and broke down weeks of negotiations with the US.
“The aerial assaults of the Zionist regime and the US against Iran’s cities, homes and infrastructures, precisely at a time when we were treading the path of diplomatic negotiations, constituted a grave betrayal of diplomacy and a subversion of efforts toward the establishment of stability and peace,” he said.
“This brazen act of aggression, in addition to martyring a number of commanders, citizens, children, women, scientists and intellectual elites of my country, inflicted a grievous blow upon international trust and the very prospect of peace in the region,” he added.
“The people of Iran, despite the most severe protracted and crushing economic sanctions, psychological and media warfare and persistent efforts to sow discord, at the very instant the first bullet was fired upon their soil, rose in unison in support of their valiant armed forces.”
Pezeshkian slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “criminal” and denounced Israel for committing “genocide” in Gaza, causing mass starvation, perpetuating “apartheid within the Occupied Territories,” and carrying out “aggression against its neighbors.”
Just days before international sanctions could be reimposed on Iran over its nuclear ambitions, Pezeshkian said: “I hereby declare once more before this assembly that Iran has never sought, and will never seek, to build a nuclear bomb. We don’t seek nuclear weapons.”
He condemned the recent Israeli strike on Doha that targeted Hamas negotiators, and declared Iran’s solidarity with the government and people of Qatar.
He also welcomed a defense agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that was signed last week.
Pezeshkian hailed it “as a beginning for a comprehensive regional security system with the cooperation of the Muslim states of West Asia in the political, security and defense domains.”
