Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday accused Westerners of endangering the lives of Ukrainians for the exclusive benefit of companies selling weapons to Kiev.
Westerners “push a poor country like Ukraine (…) struggling to line the pockets of American arms manufacturers”said the leader of the Islamic Republic in a speech to seminarians and clerics in Tehran.
“Ukrainians must fight and be killed to sell weapons”insisted.
For Ali Khamenei, the war in Ukraine is evidence of “the continuation of the colonial and predatory behavior of the West”.
On the occasion of the NATO summit, which started on Tuesday and ends today in Vilnius, Lithuania, the G7 countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan) committed this Wednesday to “long-term ” military support to Ukraine to counter the Russian offensive that began on February 24 last year.
Iran, which has grown closer to Moscow in recent months, has publicly stated that it does not support either side in the conflict.
But the United States accuses the Islamic Republic of supplying “drones” (unmanned aerial vehicles) to Russian troops and helping them build a unit to produce them, charges the Tehran regime denies.
“Today the vulnerability of the West is fortunately greater than ever”said Khamenei.
The Supreme Leader also accused the “false defenders of liberal democracy” of continuing to defend colonization.
“The French have been committing crimes and killing in Algeria for more than 100 years. Tens of thousands of people may have died,” he insisted.
An assessment released by US intelligence on Tuesday shows that Iran is not currently attempting to build nuclear weapons, but has stepped up its activities to develop them in the future.
“Iran is not currently undertaking the major nuclear weapons development activities that would be required to produce a testable nuclear device,” the report’s two-page unclassified synopsis said.
However, it “continues to conduct research and development activities that could bring it closer to being able to produce the fissile material needed to complete a nuclear device after deciding to do so,” the same document said.
Therefore, Iran continues to violate the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with world powers, from which the US government led by then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018.
The Russian military offensive on Ukrainian territory, launched on February 24 last year, plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
Source: DN
