FM spox berates German reframe of US-Israeli aggression on Iran
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei no Friday rebuked German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier for downplaying a recent aggression by the United States and Israel against Iran as merely an “unnecessary war,” saying it was a “blatant” aggression against a sovereign state. Baqaei made the remarks in a post on X after the German president described the illegal joint military aggression by the US and Israel on Iran as a “truly avoidable, unnecessary war.”
“The American-Israeli attack on Iran cannot be downplayed or reframed as merely an ‘unnecessary war.’ It was a flagrant violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter — a blatant act of aggression against a sovereign State,” Baqaei said.
He added that the US-Israel imposed war on Iran “could and should have been avoided.”
“The UN Charter does not recognize any notion of a ‘necessary war’ that would grant States the right to use force against another sovereign nation based on the arbitrary & whimsical decisions of aggressors,” he emphasized. He urged any nation that values the rule of law and the UN Charter to “unequivocally” condemn the US-Israel act of aggression and to call for accountability.
The Iranian spokesperson also confirmed the German president’s remarks regarding the current escalation and instability in the West Asian region following the unilateral destruction by the Trump administration of the 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “It is true that the current crisis confronting our region and the world stems directly from the United States’ unlawful and capricious withdrawal from the JCPOA in May 2018,” Baqaei wrote. Steinmeier directly addressed the JCPOA, stating it would have been better if that agreement had been preserved, and emphasized, “If the 2015 agreement with Iran had been preserved, it would have been possible to prevent the consequences we are currently witnessing.”
Steinmeier, who was personally involved in negotiating the JCPOA as foreign minister, bluntly called the war “a politically disastrous mistake” and a “politically fatal error.”