TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday condemned use of chemical weapons in the northern Syrian province of Idlib on Tuesday which left at least 70 people killed.

“We strongly condemn using chemical weapons regardless of its perpetrators and victims,” ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said.

Russia said on Wednesday that the chemical attack in Idlib was caused when rebel chemical munitions workshops were hit by a Syrian airstrike. 

After a chemical attack on Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, in 2013, Barack Obama, the former U.S. president, threatened an air campaign against the Syrian government which was called off when the Syrian government accepted a U.S.–Russian negotiated deal to turn over “every single bit” of its chemical weapons stockpiles for destruction and declared its intention to join the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry official said Tehran has always expressed concern over lack of attention to necessity of disarming the terrorists of their chemical weapons.

“This painful catastrophe is not the first case of using chemical weapons” in Syria “and dealing with it based on double standards, purposeful propaganda and hasty judgments which are in line with leveling accusations against others to achieve political objectives impedes” efforts to put an end to “such disasters,” he explained.

He went on to say that Iran, as a victim of chemical attacks, is ready to treat victims of the attack in Syria.

NA/PA