TEHRAN - Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the UN office in Geneva, has said that the United States’ assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani is a hard blow to regional peace and security.

In a speech at the UN Conference on Disarmament, Baghaei Hamaneh said that Soleimani’s assassination was “ridiculing principles of human civilization”, Mehr reported on Wednesday.

He said that Iran’s response to the U.S. “criminal action” conformed to international law and was in line with the right to legitimate defense.

The ambassador said Iran is firm to defend its “sovereignty, territorial integrity and dignity”.

Iran called the assassination of the top general by the U.S. military an “act of war” and an instance of “state terrorism”.

Ambassador Baghaei Hamaneh warned about the consequences of the U.S. “terrorist crime” and urged the international community to react to this move.

Keeping silence towards assassination of a senior military official when he was on a trip to another independent country will just make the “criminals more insolent”, the ambassador warned.

General Soleimani was assassinated in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on January 3. In a retaliatory move, Iran fired dozens of ballistic missiles at a major U.S. military base in Iraq on January 8.

Top Iranian political and military figures had vowed: “harsh revenge” for the martyrdom of General Soleimani.

Ayatollah Khamenei said on January 8 that such military actions are not enough and the U.S. forces must leave the region.

“The issue of revenge is another issue… The United States’ corruptive presence in the region must come to an end. They have brought war, sedition, destruction, and also the destruction of infrastructures to the region,” he stated.

In his newest remarks on January 17, Ayatollah Khamenei described the assassination of Soleimani as a cowardly act that brought disgrace upon the U.S.

NA/PA