MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th January, 2020) US President Donald Trump's claims that Washington is ready to strike at sites important to Iranian culture are an admission that the US is ready to commit war crimes, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday.
On Saturday evening, the US president stated on Twitter that Washington had identified 52 targets that were important to both Iran and Iranian culture, and will conduct further attacks if deemed necessary.
Zarif stated that Trump's proposals were a clear violation of internationally agreed legal norms, and called the drone attack that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) elite Quds Force, in Iraq on Friday a violation of international law.
"Having committed grave breaches of int'l law in Friday's cowardly assassinations, @realdonaldtrump threatens to commit again new breaches of JUS COGENS [peremptory norms of international law]; -Targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME," Iran's foreign minister wrote on Twitter.
Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi also had a strong response to President Trump's promise to conduct further strikes against Iranian targets. The minister replied to Trump's tweet, and compared the president's proposals to strike cultural sites akin to measures utilized by Islamic State (terrorist group banned in Russia), Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan.
"Like ISIS, like Hitler, Like Genghis! They all hate cultures. Trump is a 'terrorist in a suit.' He will learn history very soon that NOBODY can defeat 'the Great Iranian Nation & Culture,'" Azari Jahromi wrote.
In the early hours of Friday, Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of an Iraqi Shia militia group, were among those killed by a US drone attack near Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani and al-Muhandis were blamed by Washington for organizing demonstrations at the US Embassy in Baghdad on December 31.
US President Donald Trump said the recent strikes were a preemptive, defensive move to prevent war. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has warned that Tehran will take revenge for what it views to be a heinous crime.
