Iran Blasts ‘Inhuman’ U.S. on Chemical Attack Anniversary

Date: 28 June 2020 - 21:53

News ID: ۸۰۰۳۲

TEHRAN (Dispatches) – Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday hit out at the United States for imposing "inhumane” sanctions on the Iranian nation, saying Washington is hindering Tehran’s access to medicines urgently needed by victims of chemical attacks and other patients.
"Today, through its inhumane sanctions, the United States is preventing (export of) the medicine needed for chemical victims; the drugs needed for other victims as well as the drugs needed for various patients,” the ministry said on the occasion of the National Day of Countering Chemical and Microbial Weapons.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday the U.S. has been going down the same path with regard to its enmity toward Tehran, providing chemical weapons to Iraq in the imposed war of the 1980s on Iran and now waging economic terrorism against the Iranian people
Zarif made the remarks in a video conference held to mark a deadly chemical attack by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on the Iranian city of Sardasht in West Azarbaijan province in 1987.
"Even in the battle against the coronavirus and the recent catastrophic pandemic which has affected the entire world…the U.S. government is continuing this path,” he said.
Zarif said the U.S. is creating obstacles in the way of supplying medicines urgently needed by victims of the Iraqi chemical attacks and people suffering from acute diseases.
The minister touched on the United States’ history of crimes against the Iranian and regional nations.
The U.S., the UK, Germany, Italy, and Holland were among the countries that provided Saddam’s Ba’ath regime with the equipment and material to build chemical weapons.
Iraq made the most of its acquisitions by launching over 350 large-scale chemical attacks along the Iran-Iraq border between 1980 and 1988 on soldiers and civilians alike, using mustard gas, and the nerve agents VX, Tabun, and Sarin.
Sardasht was just one of the civilian areas attacked by mustard gas and nerve agents.
Zarif said the Islamic Republic has not forgotten and will never forget the support and complicity of the U.S. and Europe in the horrible chemical attack by Saddam in Sardasht some 33 years ago.
"We did & will never forget the UNSC silence on this heinous

crime. We rebuild whatever they destroyed,” the ministry said in a post on its official Twitter account.
On Friday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry censured the White House for its desperate efforts to lead an international campaign to use "economic, medical terrors against Iranian human rights.”
In two Tweets posted, the ministry pointed to the "horrible and deadly” violation of human rights by the regime in the United States.
"From depriving Iran of its own financial resources for making ends meet, to banning delivery of the COVID19-related supplies for saving Iranians’ lives, the U.S. regime is desperately leading the world campaign to use economic, medical terrors against Iranian #HumanRights,” one tweet read.
The ministry also noted that every year from June 26 to July 2 Iranians recall the deadly cases of human rights violation by Washington.
"In the next 7 days named as #USHumanRightsWeek , we will shed light on the U.S. actions undermining basic rights of people at home, in Iran & elsewhere,” it said.