Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Wednesday US President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy Iran, in case Tehran attempted to attack anything under US sovereignty, illegal under international law.
Trump said on Tuesday that an Iranian attack on “anything American” would be met with great and overwhelming force, up to “obliteration.”
“That statement indicates that US intentions are certainly illegal. The United States is not in a position to obliterate Iran, they do not have the capability other than using prohibited weapons to do this,” Zarif said in an interview with CNN.
The Iranian minister also recalled that the threat of war was illegal under the United Nations Charter, stressing that Iran did not seek war. “I think President Trump should remember that we don’t live in the 18th century,” the top diplomat noted. “There is a United Nations charter and threat of force is illegal.”
Last Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) downed a US Navy RQ-4A drone inside the Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf.
Trump said the following day that he had initially authorized airstrikes against three targets in Iran but called them off 10 minutes before launch.
Had it been a “manned” aircraft, his response would have been different, he said then.
This is not the first time that the Trump administration is threatening Iran with military action as a result of heightened tensions between the two sides over the past few weeks.
Trump stepped up his anti-Iran rhetoric after pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May last year and immediately launching a campaign of “maximum pressure” to force Tehran into negotiations on its ballistic missile program and growing regional influence.
In addition to several rounds of sanctions that target Iran’s economy, most notably it’s oil exports, Trump has also sent troops and military equipment to the Persian Gulf region to counter what it calls “threats” from Tehran.
It has also blamed a series of mysterious tanker attacks in the Sea of Oman to Iran without providing any evidence.
In its latest provocative move, the US imposed a series of bizarre sanctions that targeted Leader of the Islamic Revolution Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian military commanders. The Trump administration is also set to introduce sanctions against Zarif in the coming days.
Zarif on Wednesday called the latest sanctions an “additional insult by the United States against the entire Iranian nation.”
Source: Iranian Agencies
