Raeisi calls for prosecution of Trump over Gen. Soleimani's assassination

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi has called for prosecution of former US president Donald Trump, stressing that Iran will pursue the assassination of the country's top anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani.

Raeisi made the remarks as he was addressing the 77th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

The president hailed Iran's "prominent and progressive" role in confronting high-handed and interventionist policies, including the "United States-crafted terrorism."

He noted how, thanks to General Soleimani's commandership, Iran managed to frustrate the plots that were aimed at manipulating the contours of the regional countries.

"We are going to follow up just prosecution of the former American president [Donald Trump]'s atrocity through a just court," Raeisi asserted.

The assassination, directly ordered by Trump, occurred near Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020. It also killed Soleimani’s companions, including deputy commander of Iraq's anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Both Soleimani and al-Muhandis were highly revered across the Middle East because of their key role in fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

"The commander and the hero of this war against terrorism, and Daesh's destroyer was no one, but Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani," Raeisi said.

He commended General Soleimani as "the person, who was martyred in the path of [bringing about] the liberation of the nations of the region."

President Raeisi added that just prosecution of the atrocity that Trump has admitted to committing equals "doing humanity a service," asserting, "We will pursue justice and trial of the person who perpetrated it, and the one, who advised it, through a just court and until reaching a definite result."

'Iran backs promotion of justice worldwide'

The Iranian president considered justice to be the criteria by which all humanitarian causes are judged. "Justice translates into negation of oppression," he stated.

Some countries such as the Islamic Republic's success in retaining the nature of their Revolution, "has sustained hope in the hearts of the people of the world in establishment of justice."

The Islamic Revolution, which manifested the Iranian nation's march towards justice, has managed to sustain its dignity and authenticity in spite of various instances of sedition, he said.

The president prided himself on representing a nation that has, throughout the history, confronted other nations' thralldom.

"We support globalization of justice," he said, noting that the Iranian nation considered justice to be a source of unity, and oppression to be a precursor to warfare.

The chief executive denounced certain countries for their laying claim to be in favor of justice inside their own borders, but training various types of terrorists abroad and unleashing them upon other nations, or their trying to force other nations into submission by means of pressure.

‘A new world order’

President Raeisi said the international community is entering a "new era and order," which is intolerant of the "old unilateral" arrangement.

"Currently, we have gathered around each other in circumstances, where we are faced with an important fact, namely 'pivoting and changing of the world,'" the Iranian chief executive noted in during his speech to the UN General Assembly.

He considered the old world order to be one that is characterized by "unilateralism," "imperialism," "prevalence of capital over morality, equity, and virtue." 

The president identified some other features of the now-old structure as "expansion of poverty, discrimination, and inequality," deployment of violence and sanctions, and violation of nations' rights as well as abuse of international organizations and institutions towards applying pressure on independent countries.

"In a word, a world that is unjust in every aspect," he said of the moribund international arrangement.

The unjust order has, however, “lost its legitimacy” across the world opinion, and is bound to fall apart, Raeisi said, considering the current state of affairs in the West Asia region, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran, to be manifestation of the declining status of the old world order.

The Iranian president mentioned the increasing threat of terrorism and extremism as well as cultural devolution and declining political behavior among other things to be the biggest challenges that lie in the way of the humanity's "all-out progress and transcendence."

He considered "solidarity and cooperation within the framework of multilateralism that is predicated on equity and lofty human values" to be the only means of confronting the age-old threats and new international predicaments.

West's 'double-standard' towards human rights

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian resident called some countries’ double-standard approach towards the issue of human rights as "the most important factor in institutionalization of human rights violations."

Iran slams West's 'opportunism, instrumentalization of human rights'

Iran slams the West and its allies

Raeisi went on to cite examples of unconscionable human rights violations by the very countries that stake out a claim to be supporting the human rights, and made mention of mass murder of indigenous children at the hands of former Canadian administrations, the Israeli regime's violation of Palestinians' right to self-determination and the West's trampling on sanction-stricken countries' right to development.

"These indicate that the actual violators of the human rights lack the moral merit to pass opinion" about the issue, he stated.

This is while, Iran's "unparalleled" role in destroying Daesh proved that unlike the countries that throw support behind the terrorist outfit, it is the Islamic Republic that is in the position to claim defending the human rights.

Iran's nuclear program and US sanctions

President Raeisi denounced the United States for imposing sanctions against Iran as means of "punishing the Iranian nation's pursuit of justice and independence."

"Sanctions are weapons of mass murder," he said, condemning any cooperation with or silence vis-à-vis the draconian economic measures.

It was the US that left the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, Raeisi reminded, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified the Islamic Republic's commitment to the deal on 15 occasions.

No practical change in US behavior toward Iran under Biden: President Raeisi

Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi says while the rhetoric has changed in Washington, there has been no practical shift in the United States’ policies toward Iran.

The US cannot stand other countries' self-sufficiency, and instead considers militarism to be a source of security, the president said.

"What has Iran demanded except [realization of] its legal rights that has ruffled the feathers of the world's bullying countries?" he asked, asserting that the Islamic Republic has paid the price of pursuing its "just and lofty" goals, whether in the past or following Trump's departure from the nuclear deal.

The official, meanwhile, reasserted the country's opposition to nuclear weapons, reminding that a fatwa or religious decree by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has banned whatever pursuit of the non-conventional weapons.

Palestine, most oppressed nation in contemporary history

Raeisi called Palestine "the most oppressed nation" and the Israeli regime "the most oppressive" entity in the contemporary history.

He made mention of the Zionist regime's 70-plus-old history of apartheid, aggression, bloodshed of women and children as well as its turning the Gaza Strip into the world's "biggest prison" and continual usurpation and destruction of Palestinian-owned properties.

The president reiterated Iran's principled position that the fate of Palestine had to be determined through an inclusive referendum attended by all Palestinians, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.

He, meanwhile, insisted that the occupying regime, which continued to occupy other countries' territories "cannot be a partner to peace and security."

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