The former President of Russia went to Tehran to pay his last respects to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The attacks by the United States and Israel against Iran earlier this year were completely unprovoked, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on his way back from the Islamic Republic. The deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council attended the funeral ceremony of the late supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran on Friday.
The 86-year-old man was killed, along with several members of his family, on February 28 during the first wave of US-Israeli airstrikes against Iran.
Speaking to Russian journalists as he flew back to Russia on Saturday, Medvedev said this “There was no great reason for the American attack… (like) Iran was not a threat to the United States.”
The Russian official noted that Tehran was in talks with Washington when US President Donald Trump ordered the attack. This fact, according to Medvedev, indicates the erosion of international law.
The assassination of the Iranian leadership, as well as a large number of civilians, including school children, “they don’t appreciate those who made such decisions,” the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia said.
He also said that before the fighting started at the end of February, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a road map aimed at peacefully resolving the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. The United States and Israel have cited the move as one of the pretexts for taking military action against the Islamic Republic.
“I think Iran won this most difficult test with honor,” Medvedev observed, saying that although some parts of Tehran are still in ruins, life in the Iranian capital has largely returned to normal.
He told Russian journalists that during the conflict, the Islamic Republic realized that it has a barrier similar to nuclear weapons – that is, the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s energy cargo passed before the conflict began. International crude prices rose to $120 a barrel after Tehran lifted its sanctions.
In the event of renewed aggression, Iran could also block the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Medvedev suggested. The important route connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is another important route for the transportation of Middle Eastern oil.
Speaking about the Western sanctions imposed against Moscow and Tehran, the former Russian president dismissed them as “illegal unilateral restrictions” which violate international law.
You can share this story on social networks:
Follow RT on
