Iran must grow strong to defend itself in jungle formed by US

Abbas Araghchi made the remarks in an address to an international conference, entitled “International Law Under Attack: Aggression and Defense,” held by the Institute for Political and International Studies in Tehran on Sunday, Press TV reported.

He said that US President Donald Trump came to the White House with the doctrine of “peace through strength,” which turned out to be a code for “hegemony through force.”

He also noted that the manifesto of a hegemonic America, which is “a return to the law of the jungle,” includes the renaming of the US Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of War and the testing of nuclear weapons.

“A president who styles himself as the president of peace arbitrarily attacks wherever he pleases without reason or justification, orders the evacuation of cities, demands unconditional surrender, and violates and rips all international laws, even the commitments of his predecessors,” he added.

The recent unprecedented increase in the world’s military budget “will yield only one outcome: more widespread war, violence, and tension. And for good reason: in the jungle that the US has created, there is no law, and to defend oneself, one must be strong.”

The top Iranian diplomat also described Israel as an agent and appendage of the United States in West Asia, warning that the regime pursues its boundless and dangerous geopolitical ambitions by attacking the most fundamental principles of international law.

“This regime, relying on a blank check from Washington and some European states, and emboldened by billions of dollars in NATO and Western weapons and military equipment, and the immunity they have created for it in international forums, has committed and continues to commit the most heinous of crimes against humanity, mass killings, murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing,” he said.

Also in his remarks, Araghchi warned that no country in West Asia is safe from Israel’s military and security aspirations as the usurping regime has attacked seven countries in the past two years, and occupied new areas in the region in addition to Palestine.

Referring to illegal Israeli-US aggression against Iran in June, he said Tel Aviv launched the assault before the sixth round of indirect Iran-US nuclear talks in Muscat, against the possibility of reaching an agreement through peaceful means.

“The truth is that when the Israeli regime attacked Iran on June 13, under the order and guidance of the President of the United States, the first bombs were fired at the negotiating table between Iran and the United States—negotiations of which five rounds had been held, with the sixth round slated for two days later, the 15th of June,” he stated. “Diplomacy was the first victim of the 12-day war.”

Additionally, Araghchi emphasized that the Israeli-US aggression against Iran, the martyrdom of a number of civilians, the assassination of commanders in their residences, and the targeting of peaceful nuclear facilities not only violated international law and the UN Charter but also constituted an all-out assault on the safeguards and non-proliferation regime./mehr