On 28 June 1987, Iraqi bombers attacked four crowded residential areas of Sardasht in Iran’s province of West Azerbaijan with chemical bombs, killing at least 130 people and exposing 8,000 inhabitants to the gas attack. The attack made Sardasht the third city in the world after Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki which became the target of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
31 years since that day, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarid said in a statement issued on Thursday, marking the national day of combating chemical and microbial weapons, that the two aggressive regimes of Israel and the US are responsible for the looming threat of chemical weapons over the Middle East region.
“The US has so far failed to comply with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and has violated the Convention in a blatant manner,” said Zarif.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, as an active member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, along with other member states, calls on the United States to live up to its CWC commitments, and destroy its entire arsenal of chemical weapons in an irreversible way under international supervision,” Zarif stressed.
He went on to add that the US and Israel’s objection to establishing a zone free of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East has made them the sole culprits for the prolonged looming threat of inhumane weapons over this critical region.
The Iranian top diplomat further called on the international community to reprimand and condemn Israel and the United States, and to exert coordinated pressure on the Israeli regime, as the greatest threat to the regional and global security, to destroy its arsenal of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
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