US Claims about Syria ‘Useless, Suspicious’: Iran

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi on Wednesday slammed the recent remarks by US officials who had spoken of “preventive attacks” against Syria under the pretext of Damascus’ preparation for a chemical attack.

Qassemi called on the international community to counter this adventurism as it thinks about its consequences and considers the fact that such moves will further worsen the security and humanitarian situation in the region.

“While the Syrian government has, for more than six years now, been fighting terrorism and terrorist groups with full force using all its resources and has paid a heavy price in this path, making such baseless claims [that Syria may be preparing for a chemical attack] and adopting measures that will only strengthen the position and situation of terrorist groups and further complicate the campaign against such groups, is useless, questionable and suspicious, and that is why the international community should seriously show proper and deterrent reaction to such unilateral and illegal moves,” said the spokesman.

He then referred to attacks that the US carried out against Syria a few months ago under the pretext that Damascus had used chemical weapons.

“After making the claim [that Damascus had conducted a chemical attack], the US government, in a unilateral move, carried out missile attacks on Syrian soil while there was no conclusive evidence suggesting the Syrian government was involved in the attack,” he said.

“After that, the Islamic Republic of Iran along with Syrian and Russian governments called for a fact-finding committee to be set up and a fact-finding team to be dispatched to Syria, but strangely enough, the proposal was opposed by the US and some of its allies which did not allow an international and impartial investigation to be conducted into the incident,” he said.

Qassemi warned against any wrong and unilateral military move by the US and called on the world community and relevant bodies to tap into all their potentialities and mechanisms to prevent this destabilizing move.