Islam Times - US Assassination of Gen. Soleimani Blatant Example of Terrorism: Iran’s FM

Islam Times - Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian denounced the American assassination of top commander Lt. General Qassem Soleimani as a brazen example of terrorism, urging the United Nations to take action to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“The assassination of Martyr General Soleimani, the great General of Peace, by the United States on the Iraqi soil, was one of the most obvious instances of terrorism,” the Iranian foreign minister said in a meeting with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)’s president, Abdulla Shahid, held on the sidelined of the UNGA in New York on Thursday.

Amirabdollahian said an international legal committee has been formed inside Iran to pursue the atrocity, with the aim of bringing those who perpetrated and ordered it to justice.

The United Nations, however, definitely plays an important role in this regard too, the foreign minister underlined.

He called terrorism a phenomenon that has come to afflict the entire world, noting the Islamic Republic’s constructive role in cooperating with the regional countries, from Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan, in fighting it, Iranian News Agency reported.

General Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), used to direct the military advisory support that Iran has been providing to Iraq and Syria against terrorism at the Arab countries’ respective request.

The assistance helped the countries rout the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh in late 2017. The United States has been using the group as an excuse to prolong its invasion of the countries.

Early last year, the US carried out a drone strike against the Iraqi capital Baghdad at the orders of former American president Donald Trump that led to the martyrdom of General Soleimani and senior Iraqi counter-terrorism commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis alongside their companions.

Elsewhere in the meeting with Shahid, the Iranian foreign minister addressed the other forms of American terrorism that has been targeting Iran, pointing to the economic terrorism that Washington has been waging against the Iranian nation through its oppressive sanctions.

The US reinstated the sanctions in 2018 after illegally and unilaterally leaving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and world countries. Ever since, it has also been trying to force other countries into committing themselves to the coercive measures and stopping all sorts of trade with Iran.

Amirabdollahian noted how the US has been tying the economic terrorism to health and pharmaceutical terrorism too, referring to its prevention of exports of direly-needed medicines to Iran.

The top diplomat, therefore, urged the international community to serve the US’s approach with a serious response. The General Assembly was expected to stand up to the US’s unilateralism and lawlessness by reinforcing multilateralism, he added.

Shahid, for his part, congratulated Amirabdollahian on his assumption of the role of Iran’s foreign minister. He reminisced about a trip he had made to the Iranian capital in 1996 to take part in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation conference in his capacity as a Maldivian official, calling his stay a memorable one.

Shahid described a multilateral system as the international community’s only choice and way forward. He cited the issue of the pandemic as a case in point, saying the viral outbreak showed how countries were interconnected, and that each one’s safety was tied to the safety of all the others.