NEW YORK (Dispatches) -- President Masoud Pezeshkian has said the Zionist regime has been defeated in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and now cannot “repair its myth of invincibility” through resorting to barbarism against Lebanon.
“The insane Israeli barbarism in Lebanon should be stopped before setting the region and the world on fire,” he told the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly here.
“Naturally, the blind and terrorist crimes of the past days and the extensive aggression against Lebanon that shed the blood of thousands of innocent people will not remain unanswered,” he added.
Pezeshking said those governments that stand in the way of cessation of this terrible catastrophe and still call themselves defenders of the human rights, have to bear the consequences.
“The people of the world have witnessed the nature of the Israeli regime throughout the past year. They have seen how the regime’s rulers perpetrate crimes,” he said.
The Zionist regime, though, refers to its “genocide, war crime, and state terrorism as ‘legitimate defense’ and identifies hospitals, kindergartens, and schools as ‘legitimate military targets,’” the president added. 
He also denounced the branding of those who have been protesting the Israeli war across the world as “ant-Semites,” stating that the Islamic Republic stands by the international protesters.
Pezeshkian addressed the issue of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, lambasting the Israeli regime and its supporters for trying to identify the Palestinians, “who have risen up after seven decades of occupation and humiliation, as ‘terrorists.’”
“The only means of ending the 70-year nightmare of insecurity in the West Asia and the world lies in restoration of the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination,” he noted.
In order to exercise such right, all of Palestine’s current and former inhabitants have to partake in a referendum, thus determining their future, Pezeshkian said. 
“We believe that through such mechanism, sustainable peace can be achieved. It is only through this course that Muslims, Jews, and Christians can end up living in one land alongside one another amid calm and away from racism and apartheid.” 
‘Iran After Peace for All’
Pezeshkian said Iran pursues peace for the entirety of the international community, asserting, “We want peace for all and are not after engaging in war and fighting with anyone.”
“Take a look at the contemporary history of the region. Iran has never acted as an initiator of any war,” the president said, adding that the country had, in all cases, “just heroically defended itself in the face of others’ aggression and caused the aggressors to regret” their aggression. 
Throughout its modern history, Iran has repeatedly been subjected to threats, warfare, occupation, and sanctions, he said, noting how other countries withheld their assistance from the country, ignored its assertions of neutrality, and even backed the aggressors on those occasions.
“We have learned through experience that we can only rely on the people and our indigenous capabilities. The Islamic Republic is intent on providing and guaranteeing its own security, not on causing insecurity for others.”
 Pezeshkian said Iran has not only neither occupied any foreign territory nor coveted the interests of other countries, but it has also repeatedly forwarded various proposals to its neighbors and international organizations for establishment of sustainable peace and stability in the region.
“We have spoken about the necessity of regional unity and formation of a strong region,” the president stated.
Realization of such prospect, he said, depends on such principles as the regional countries’ attaching respect to the essence of good-neighborliness, their rejection of foreign intervention due to its contribution to insecurity, their common endeavor towards emergence of a new, inclusive, and sustainable regional order that benefits the interests of all, and

  finally the countries’ refraining from using their resources towards attritional competitions and arms races.
“Our region suffers from war, sectarian tensions, terrorism, extremism, drug smuggling, shortage of water resources, refugee crises, environmental destruction, and foreign interference,” Pezeshkian said.
“We can address these common challenges towards ensuring a better future for the next generations.”
Citing an instance of the Islamic Republic’s advocacy for peace, he mentioned the country’s favoring realization of sustainable peace and security for both Ukraine and Russia, which have been engaged in a conflict since 2022.
The Islamic Republic, he said, lays emphasis on the need for expedient cessation of military conflict in Ukraine, supports whatever peaceful resolution, and believes that the crisis can only be resolved through negotiation.
Pezeshkian touched on the Zionist regime’s assassination of at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists in the past, its deadly attack Iran’s consulate in Damascus in April, and its assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
He also mentioned the regime’s provision of “open and clandestine support for Daesh and other terror outfits.”
“On the contrary, Iran has supported liberating and popular movements that have been the victim of the Israeli regime’s crimes and colonialism for four generations.”

‘Unilateral Sanctions Targeting Iranian People’

Pezeshkian, meanwhile, addressed the issue of the unilateral sanctions that have been imposed on Iran by the United States and its allies since former president Donald Trump abandoned an international nuclear deal with Tehran.
The move, he said, “indicated a threat-oriented perspective in the political area and a power-oriented attitude in the economic area” by the West. 
Pezeshkian reminded that the “maximum pressure” policy was deployed against the Iranian nation at a time, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had verified the country’s commitment to all of its obligations under the JCPOA.
“Unilateral sanctions have targeted the people, and seek to destroy the foundations of Iran’s economy,” the president said.
“The purpose is securitization of Iran, and the result will be insecurity for everyone,” he added.
Pezeshkian said the U.S. has coupled the sanctions with engaging in military build-up around Iran by setting up various military bases near the country’s borders.
Addressing the American people, he said, “It is not Iran that has sanctioned your country and prevented you from engaging in commercial relations with the world. It is not Iran that has set up military bases near your borders.”
“We are not the ones, who have assassinated your army chiefs. It is rather the United States, which assassinated Iran’s dearest general at Baghdad airport,” Pezeshkian also said. 
He was referring to the Trump’s administration’s assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), outside the main airport in the Iraqi capital in January 2020.
“In the current interconnected world, one country’s security and interests can never be provided through destruction of others’ security and interests,” the president said.
“We need a new attitude towards resolution of international issues. Such attitude has to focus on opportunities instead of threats. Based on this very interaction-minded logic, new opportunities can be created for cooperation.”