TEHRAN – Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Wednesday that it is the people and not foreign powers that form the basis of Iran’s power.

“Power of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the discourse that it has presented to the world. A discourse which considers people and not a foreign power the basis of power, legitimacy, security, progress and independence,” he said during a speech at a ceremony held to mark the international day of Islamic human rights.

Referring to the 74th anniversary of the U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima, Zarif said, “A mentality that believes it should annihilate hundreds of thousands of women, men and children to end the war (Second World War), today its secretary of state announces that “the Iranian people should decide whether they want to eat or continue the current policy.”

Zarif said this mentality still persists in Washington. “It is the same policy and there has been no change in that view.”

“We gain our security, progress and legitimacy from our people.”Elsewhere in his remarks, the foreign minister said, “We never buy security and we never sell it, because we gain our security, progress and legitimacy from our people.”

The foreign minister added that certain countries think their security comes from dependence on other countries and imagine that security can be purchased.

“Didn’t Saudi Arabia provide Saddam’s regime with $75 billion to kill the Iranian people? Why it has not understood that money does not bring security? And after that Saddam used the same weapons against Saudi Arabia,” Zarif remarked in an open reference to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s army in 1990 which involved Saudi Arabia as well.  

The chief diplomat also said that the discourse of unilateralism and bullying is on the wane.

Elsewhere, he described the U.S. sanctions against Iran as “terrorism”.

“They say we put so much pressure on the Iranian people so that they change their government. So if it is not terrorism what it can be called”? Zarif asked.

Zarif said it is a kind of terrorism that has targeted the 82 million Iranians, adding they want to deprive the Iranians of their own resources.  

In May 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the 2015 nuclear deal and re-imposed the anti-Iran sanctions that had been lifted under the landmark deal in 2016. In line with “maximum pressure” policy toward Tehran, the United States has introduced a total ban on Iran’s oil export, the main source of the country’s income.
 

NA/PA