Iran draws parallels between Sardasht chemical attack and Gaza genocide amid global silence
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has compared the 1987 Sardasht chemical attack to the ongoing Gaza genocide, criticizing self-proclaimed human rights defenders for their continued silence in the face of blatant human rights violations.
Baghaei made the remarks on Saturday, marking the 38th anniversary of a chemical attack on Sardasht, a small city in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province, by Western-backed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“Sardasht was the first city, after World War II, to taste the bitter reality of chemical weapons—an experience suffered in the heavy silence of the world, a city whose cries of burning flesh were drowned in the clamor of self-proclaimed human rights advocates,” Baghaei said.
“On that day, humanity itself had run out of breath. Today, the same tragedy is being replayed on the stage of Gaza,” he lamented.
Thirty-eight years ago, on a day like this—on the 28th of June, 1987—the skies over the oppressed city of Sardasht held no air, only the poisoned breath of chemical bombs, he recounted.
These bombs, he highlighted, manufactured in the industrial factories of certain so-called civilized powers, had been gifted to the Ba’athist regime.
“That day, dozens of defenseless civilians in Sardasht lost their lives, and those who survived were left with the scars of scorched lungs and the lifelong struggle to breathe,” he noted.
“Today, decades later, the darkness of that same silence is being repeated—this time not in the dusty alleyways of Sardasht, but in the blood-soaked ruins of Gaza, and its disgraceful trail lingers in the reckless fantasies of aggression against Iran,” Baghaei said mentioning Israel’s recent unprovoked 12-day war against Iran, where hundreds of civilians have been killed.
“The actors remain the same; only the masks have changed. The essence and intent are unchanged, but now brazen shamelessness has replaced any semblance of order or honesty,” he noted.
“Iran neither forgets nor forgives this old wound,” Baghaei warned, adding, “The scent of gas and ash will not be erased from the memory of history by the clamor of deceitful profiteers. Forgetfulness is like a poisoned chalice—one that the sorcerer of the human rights myth pours for others, yet fate turns it so that the first sip is his own.”
On June 28, 1987, the Saddam regime dropped mustard gas bombs on Sardasht, killing at least 119 Iranian civilians and injuring another 8,000, leaving some of them permanently disabled.
Western countries- including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, France, and the United States- contributed to the Iraqi regime’s chemical weapons program at the time.
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