Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned the United States to end its military intervention in the region, saying such a withdrawal will both help restore regional security and serve Washington’s own interests.
The “intolerable” insecurity currently afflicting the region menaces Asia, Europe, and even America itself as it can lead to all sorts of incidents, Rouhani said at a government meeting on Wednesday.
The American forces in the region are today faced with insecurity, which may come to threaten the European troops as well in the near future, he added.
“Restore this security. We want you to leave the region…not by means of war, but by taking the wise move [to do so],” he said. “You [yourself] will stand to benefit from this. Go down the path that benefits the region and the entire world,” the president added.
He also touched on the Islamic Republic’s Wednesday strikes against US bases in western and northern Iraq, which came in retaliation for the US drone strikes that had assassinated revered senior Iranian commander, Lieutenant General Qassem Suleimani, among others, in Baghdad on January 3.
“General Suleimani’s martyrdom will not go unanswered. The answer was given in the military area,” he said, noting that the strikes that hit the US’s Ain al-Assad Airbase in Iraq’s Anbar Province showed that “we do not back down in the face of the US and will surely respond to their crime.”
Rouhani also addressed the human error that caused the downing of a Ukrainian passenger aircraft shortly after take-off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport last week.
The crash came after the aircraft was mistaken for an incoming cruise missile, while a communication breakdown prevented the operator from obtaining the permission required for the launch. It killed all the 176 people on board.
“Our people and the word should be assured that this incident is not repeatable,” the president asserted.
Rouhani said the General Staff of the Armed Forces took a “good step” in announcing the cause of the tragedy afterwards, but the Armed Forces have to follow it up with rectifying measures.
“A final step,” he added, would be making sure that the mistake would not happen again.
However, any measure aimed at making up for the error should not serve to weaken the Armed Forces, he said. “We need and will always need our Armed Forces.”
The president, meanwhile, said that a delay in informing the public about the circumstances surrounding the crash came due to the fact that the reason for the incident was not “plausible” at first.
“No one could believe that an aircraft has taken off from an international airport in the capital, begun flying on its route, and is then targeted,” Rouhani said. The Armed Forces, he added, need to apologize to the people for the delay — if there has been any.
He said a first compensatory measure could be “diligently” following up on the issue through legal channels with the participation of the Judiciary, the government, and the Armed Forces.
Elsewhere, the chief executive urged the trio of European countries and the US to live up to their obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear deal that they signed with Tehran in 2015.
The US under President Donald Trump left the deal in May 2018 and returned the sanctions that it had lifted. The UK, France, and Germany also bowed to the sanctions and refused to meet Iran’s business interests under the deal despite an earlier pledge to protect the JCPOA.
Rouhani said Washington is responsible for killing hundreds of Iranians through the sanctions it has been imposing on the country since the 1979 victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, including the ones that have blocked the Islamic Republic’s access to medicine and medical equipment.
The president said the countermeasures that Iran has been taking in response to the US and Europeans’ non-commitment are both reversible and under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s watch.
The comments came a day after the European trio — France, Britain and Germany — triggered a “dispute mechanism” within the deal that enables them to accuse Iran of violating it and could lead to the UN sanctions which had been lifted by the JCPOA.
On Tuesday, British Prime Minister even suggested that the JCPOA be discarded in favor of a “Trump deal.”
“What is he [Johnson] thinking of?…Trump does nothing, but to violate international agreements,” the president said.
Rouhani said by continued betrayal of their commitments, the Europeans and the US would only exacerbate the situation in the region, adding, “You will suffer if you take a wrong move.”
The US quit the JCPOA after Trump was told by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and radical American politicians that they would bring about regime change in Iran after the withdrawal, Rouhani noted.
However, the move was followed by the US’s own defeat in the region, he said. “Today, it has become apparent to everyone that you made the wrong move concerning the JCPOA.”
“If you return [from your mistakes] and act in the interest of regional security, we are prepared [for reciprocal measures,] too,” he noted.
Source: Press TV
