Iran says US is evading responsibility for what it calls unlawful aggression

Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, said in a post on his X account late on Saturday that American officials have introduced what he called a new deceptive narrative aimed at evading responsibility for the consequences of their actions against Iran. He described those consequences as human, economic and geopolitical, and characterized the actions as unlawful aggression.

According to the post, the narrative put forward by US officials holds that America did not start the war with Iran and that Iranians started it with the 1979 Revolution. Baghaei rejected this as a fabrication that any reasonable person would recognize as false without hesitation. He said the 1979 Revolution was about reclaiming the country's sovereignty, freedom and human dignity, and that the memory of American interference, particularly the 1953 CIA-backed coup, remained fresh in the minds of Iranians then as it does today.

Baghaei said military aggression has a clear definition, and that no matter how officials try to evade the issue, they cannot erase from the minds of the American people or the world the fact that, in his account, the United States twice in less than nine months launched unprovoked aggression against Iran in the midst of diplomatic negotiations. He said Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian officials were assassinated, women and children were killed and wounded, and vital infrastructure was destroyed.

He further said that now that the US administration has reached what he called a military and political dead end, it is trying both to deny responsibility for starting the war and to conceal its failure to achieve its objectives behind a narrative of victory. Baghaei added that, at the highest levels, the American political establishment has acknowledged that the war against Iran was the principal cause of its electoral defeat.

The remarks were carried by Mehr News Agency, which reported the foreign ministry spokesman's statements as published on his X account.