Only 'decisive action' can force Israel to comply with international law: Iran

Iran strongly condemns as “heinous and horrific” recent remarks by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who justified the killing of two million Palestinians through deliberate starvation, saying Israel can only be made to comply with international law through "decisive and deterrent action."

“The statements of this member of the criminal Zionist gang are only a kind of public declaration and confession,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said in a post on his X account on Thursday, adding that the world must have understood by now that the criminal Zionist regime will be forced to comply with international rules only if it faces “pressure and decisive and deterrent action.”

Otherwise, the Israeli regime “knows no boundaries for its heinous crimes and measures,” Kan’ani emphasized, adding that such remarks by Israeli officials "deserve international prosecution."

Smotrich said on Monday that he believes blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is “justified and moral” even if it causes two million civilians to die of hunger in the coastal Palestinian territory.

Killing two million by hunger in Gaza ‘justified, moral’: Israeli minister

Bezalel Smotrich says the death of two million Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip from hunger might be “justified and moral.”

The Iranian spokesperson said the world has been witnessing the Israeli regime’s acts of genocide and mass killing of Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip through bombardment, famine and starvation over the past 10 months.

Kan’ani further called on the European Union to fulfill its “international, moral and humanitarian responsibilities” towards Israel and end its political and military support for the regime instead of limiting itself to verbally condemning Smotrich’s statements.

The European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday "strongly" condemned recent statements by the Israeli finance minister, saying, "Deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime."

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer also on Wednesday strongly condemned the Israeli finance minister’s “completely unacceptable and outrageous remarks” and said, “We reject them in the strongest possible terms.”

Deliberate starvation of civilians a war crime, EU warns Israel

The European Union and the UK slam remarks by an Israeli minister who controversially labeled starvation in Gaza as morally acceptable.

In a Wednesday statement, the French Foreign Ministry also expressed outrage over Smotrich's comments.

At least 39,699 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed and 91,722 people wounded in the war that Israel began on October 7, 2023 following a retaliatory operation by the Palestinian territory’s resistance movements.

Concomitantly with the Gaza war, Israel has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

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