'Unforgivable crime': Iran tells UK, France it ‘reserves right’ to punish Israel
Iran tells the United Kingdom and France that it reserves the right to punish the Israeli regime for its "unforgivable" crime of assassinating senior Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh last month.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the remarks during separate telephone conversations with his British and French counterparts, David Lammy and Stéphane Séjourné, on Friday.
“The Islamic Republic is not after expansion of war and escalation of tensions in the region, but will not back down from [exercising] its certain right to respond to the Zionist regime’s criminal and terrorist act,” the Iranian top diplomat told Lammy.
Speaking to Séjourné, he described the assassination as an "unforgivable" violation of Iran’s security and sovereignty and underlined the Islamic Republic’s right to punish the aggressor.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian resistance movement’s Political Bureau chief, was assassinated in a targeted killing operation in Tehran on July 31. He was in the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Addressing the French official, Araghchi pointed to the Israeli regime’s ongoing policies and actions aimed at intensifying tensions and expanding instability across the region.
He urged France and other Western parties to focus their efforts on preventing Tel Aviv from continuing its incendiary measures.
The remarks concerned the regime’s other widespread acts of targeted killing against resistance figures across the region, Tel Aviv’s ongoing war of genocide against the Gaza Strip, and its daily attacks against neighboring Lebanon.
The European officials, meanwhile, congratulated Araghchi on his recent approval as Iran’s new foreign minister.
Lammy considered the inauguration of the Islamic Republic’s new administration to be a new opportunity that could be used towards enhancement of bilateral diplomatic consultations, while Séjourné expressed Paris’s readiness for continuation of such consultations with Tehran.
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