Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Wednesday that the Iranian people had been the “victims of terrorism,” rejecting U.S. President Donald Trump’s description of Iran as “terrorists.”
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, Pezeshkian displayed images of people killed in a U.S. strike on a school in Minab at the start of the war, as well as images of a sports hall in Lamerd that he said was destroyed by U.S. bombardment.
“The United States, by using weapons with multiple warheads, targeted that sports hall. They martyred and assassinated our scientists, our men, women and children. Innocent children who in truth had committed no crimes, no sins,” he said.
Masoud Pezeshkian said that although Iran had responded to strikes by the United States and Israel, it had not targeted civilian areas.
“Yes, they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee. We did not bow our head,” he said. “We responded, but we did not hit civilian populations.”
“They came into surrounding territories and targeted our universities, our health care centers, our schools, our hospitals, our infrastructure; all of it against international law,” Pezeshkian added.
He also said Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran by Israel on the day of his inauguration as president.
“Israel targets any neighborhood in any city in any province, commits assassinations like a true terrorist,” he said.
“Those who are terrorists, and train and protect terrorists, describe us as such,” he added. “We have only defended ourselves; we are not terrorists.”
At the beginning of his speech, Pezeshkian held up a picture of the Islamic Republic’s late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who he said was killed in an airstrike on his compound in Tehran on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran.
He also displayed images of children killed in a strike on a school.
A U.N. fact-finding mission on Iran said earlier this month that it had reasonable grounds to believe the United States was behind two military strikes on a school and a sports facility in Iran and that the attacks constituted war crimes.
Pezeshkian also said Iran needs peaceful nuclear energy, not a nuclear bomb.
“For our country, peaceful nuclear technology is part of our inherent progress,” he said, adding, “Iran does not accept nuclear technology to be at the exclusive disposal of some, of a handful.”
“We say it clearly, no nuclear weapons and no limitations to peaceful nuclear technology,” he said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, said in an interview with state television Wednesday that if neighboring countries cooperate with the United States by stopping Iranian flights, Iran would ensure their airports could no longer operate.
