Iran’s interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani has held the United States accountable for aiding and abetting the Zionist regime in the genocidal crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, stressing that Washington can’t be an impartial mediator as it is obstructing efforts to establish a ceasefire in the coastal sliver.
“Through open support for Zionists’ atrocities, the United States has proven its complicity and that it cannot be an impartial mediator. It is constantly trying to place hurdles on the path of stopping the occupying regime’s brutalities, and encouraging Zionists to continue their genocide,” Bagheri Kani told Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in a telephone conversation on Saturday evening.
He stressed that the Israeli regime is perpetrating atrocities in Gaza at the same time as exercising hypocrisy and deceit in negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the besieged strip.
Commenting on the Israeli assassination of the political bureau chief of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the top Iranian diplomat stated that the Islamic Republic reserves its inherent and legitimate right to respond to the crime.
Bagheri Kani stressed that Palestinians, thanks to their exemplary courage, will not surrender to the Zionist regime.
Haniyeh, who was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Iran's newly-elected President Masoud Pezeshkian, alongside other Axis of Resistance leaders, was martyred along with his bodyguard, in an attack early on July 31.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned the Israeli regime of a "harsh response" for Haniyeh's assassination, calling it the Islamic Republic's duty to avenge the Palestinian resistance leader's blood.
“The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime martyred our dear guest in our homeland and left us bereaved, but it also set the ground for a harsh punishment for itself,” the Leader said.
For his part, Abdelatty pointed to the multi-party meetings in the Egyptian capital Cairo to conclude a ceasefire in Gaza, stressing that Egypt's efforts focus on assisting Palestinians and immediately stopping the Zionists' crimes in Gaza.
He expressed regret over the severe scarcity of food and medicine in the Gaza Strip and the outbreaks of various infectious diseases, emphasizing that the international community’s consensus is required in order to establish a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible.
Cairo is set to host the next round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, building on recent discussions in Doha that mediators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have classed as promising.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured tens of thousands others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.