Iran’s Supreme Leader has condemned US, UK, and French leaders as “criminals” for carrying out airstrikes in response to the chemical attacks of Syria’s Assad regime.
Ayatollah Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian officials on Saturday, hours after the strikes:
I clearly declare that the US President, the French President, and the UK Prime Minister are criminals and have committed a crime….
[They] will achieve nothing and make no benefit, as they have been in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan in the past few years, and committed such crimes but have not profited from them.
Khamenei also repeated his claim that the US, supported by Saudi money, created the “evil creatures” of the Islamic State. He referred to remarks last month by Donald Trump that the US spent $7 trillion dollars in the Middle East and “got nothing”:
[Trump] is right. They achieved nothing, and the US will not achieve anything in the future either no matter how much money it spends.
President Hassan Rouhani expressed support for the Syrian regime in a phone call to Bashar al-Assad, proclaiming that the US-UK-France airstrikes were a sign of their backing of defeated “terrorists”.
Rouhani asserted, “Iran will continue its activity in all international circles, particularly in cooperation with Russia and Turkey, to help achieve peace and stability in the region and in Syria.”
Unlike Khamenei and Rouhani, Iran’s Foreign Ministry implicitly referred to last weekend’s Assad regime chemical attacks on Douma near Damascus, while still opposing the US-UK-French response:
The aggression is a flagrant violation of international law and a disregard of Syria’s right to national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Based on religious, legal and ethical regulations, Iran opposes any use of chemical weapons, but at the same time, strongly rejects and condemns the fabrication of excuses to invade an independent country.
They are definitely criminals for striking a scientific facility producing antitodies for millions of Syrians:
At destroyed Syria lab, workers say they produce antidotes to snake venom not toxic weapons: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/at-destroyed-syria-lab-workers-say-they-produce-antidotes-to-snake-venom-not-toxic-weapons/story-e2OIzVf2RqPMMuRK0XdK0H.html
“As we work in civilian pharmaceutical and chemical research, we did not expect that we would be hit,” he said. Instead, the centre had been producing antidotes to scorpion and snake venom while running tests on chemical products used in making food, medicine and children’s toys, according to Said.”
“If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here. I’ve been here since 5:30 am in full health — I’m not coughing,” he added. Said said. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had visited the site in Barzeh in recent years and had declared it free of any toxic weapons. “The OPCW used to stay in the two upper rooms, and use the labs, and we would cooperate with them completely,” he said. “The OPCW has proven in two reports that this building and the centre as a whole are empty and do not produce any chemical weapons.”
The CIA, however, believes that the facility was conducting R&D into nerve agents. Of course, as any biologist would know, scorpion and snake poisons are a form of nerve agent.
The attack on the facility was indisputably illegal under international law.
I have no doubt that such a large facility, identified as a Research Complex within the structure of the Syrian armed forces, was established only for producing scorpion and snake venom.
I’m surprised that they didn’t claim it was an infant formula-producing factory, as they did in Iraq, whenever a facility was struck. {They even had road signs in Arabic and, helpfully, English that said “this way to the milk factory.”}