TEHRAN -- Tehran has vehemently denounced as “baseless, one-sided, and unjust” an anti-Iranian statement by the Group of Seven industrialized states.
The statement was issued during a meeting of the group’s sevenfold members—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—in Germany on Tuesday.
It urged “restriction of Iran’s nuclear program,” faulted Iran’s “ballistic missile activities,” and accused it of “human rights violations.”
Later during the day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said the country “strongly condemns” the passages of the statement.
The statement, he said, “deliberately ignores” the United States’ departure from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and others as well as Washington’s subsequent re-imposition of illegal sanctions against the Iranian people.
The Iranian official reprimanded the countries that had issued the statement for their cooperation with the U.S. in imposing sanctions and their refusal to confront the coercive economic measures.
He also spurned any accusations directed towards Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program, saying the statement “deliberately” ignores the Islamic Republic’s ban on all nuclear weapons.
Kan’ani reminded that the G7 countries were facing Iran with “factitious accusations,” while they, themselves, were in possession of the world’s “biggest nuclear arsenal.”
The spokesman, meanwhile, blasted the statement for trying to portray Iran’s comprehensive cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear body, in a bad light.
The official further rejected all allegations against Iran’s “legitimate and defensive missile program,” reminding that the country’s missile work can never be subject to any negotiation or compromise.
“It is necessary that the parties that have issued the statement rather be accountable for their sales of billions of dollars of advanced weapons, which is one of the most important factors of instability in our region,” Kan’ani asserted.
Addressing the human rights accusations made through the statement, the official said the countries throwing the allegations were the very same states that have closed their eyes to the “flagrant violation” of the Iranian nation’s rights as a result of the sanctions.