Tehran has denounced Riyadh for supporting the US’s assassination of Iran’s senior anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, saying such a stance makes the Saudi regime “complicit” in Washington’s crime. RNA - Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi made the remarks on Monday, a day after Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said he agreed with his American counterpart Mike Pompeo that the region was “safer” following General Soleimani’s martyrdom in an interview with the CNN.
The Saudi official also said he believed the US had acted in “their own legitimate self-defense” by assassinating the Middle East’s most respected anti-terror commander on Iraqi soil.
Mousavi reminded Riyadh that the terrorist American military carried out the targeted killing on another country’s soil, inside a civilian airport, and against an official guest of the hosting country, which has itself, decried the bloodshed as a violation of its domestic laws and clear international legal principles.
The Iranian official said it was “regretful and reprehensible” that the Saudi minister “falsified all transparent international regulations” to call the American crime an act of “legitimate self-defense.”
He also advised the Saudi diplomat to read up on the definition of “legitimate defense” in international legal sources.
This expression of support makes the Saudi regime complicit in the crime, which was perpetrated on US President Donald Trump’s direct order, Mousavi said.
General Soleimani was martyred alongside fellow Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and some others in a set of drone strikes that targeted their vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport on January 3.
During his lifetime, General Soleimani indispensably contributed to the defeat of the most brutal of the terror groups to ever take on the region, including the Daesh Takfiri outfit.
“Considering itself to be the godfather of Daesh and terrorist outfits,” Riyadh believes that the martyrdom of the regional resistance movement’s commanders has brought along security for the terrorists and the states breeding them, the Iranian official noted.
Mousavi said Riyadh had already “played an essential role” in sowing crises across the region with its “alliance with Trump’s terrorist administration and infanticidal Zionists,” citing Riyadh’s US-backed war against Yemen as an example.