TEHRAN - The Israeli regime’s charges that Tehran has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention were flatly denied on Friday by Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs.

Playing the blame game, Reza Najafi said, does not absolve the regime of its “brutal crimes” against Palestinians throughout the previous seven decades.

Najafi delivered the response at the 28th Session of the Conference of the States Parties, which oversees the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. 

From November 27 to December 1, delegates from every member state of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) gathered in The Hague.

During his speech, Najafi criticized the Israeli envoy’s unfounded accusations and emphasized Iran’s position as one of the main countries targeted by chemical weapons.

Najafi was referring to Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iranian civilians and military forces during Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s.

The Iranian diplomat made clear that “the child-killing Israeli regime,” which has denied having chemical weapons on hand, is not qualified to remark on a member state that has been subjected to such deadly weaponry.

In his closing remarks, he said that blaming member states and playing games would not help the Israeli regime, which is the main cause of instability in West Asia.

Also on Monday, he said that the Israeli regime should face accountability for the four main crimes it has committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip during its most recent massive military campaign.

“During the past weeks, the Israeli regime has committed all four core international crimes, namely genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression repeatedly and concurrently,” he stated.

Nejafi went on to add, “This entails the international responsibility of the Israeli regime and its supporters as well as the individual criminal responsibility of all those who ordered and committed such crimes or facilitated, aided and abetted their commission, including by providing the required means.”

All those accountable for the atrocities against the Gazan people will be brought to justice, stressed the diplomat.

He reiterated that, in addition to these figures, the “horrifying” reports and “heart-breaking” images of Israel’s barbaric invasion once again demonstrated, clearly and undeniably, the regime’s “murderous” nature, as it possesses weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), including chemical weapons in its stockpiles.

Israel’s atrocities, Najafi stressed, together with a regime minister’s proposal to drop even a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, demonstrated once and for all the grave risk that Israeli chemical weapons pose to regional and global peace and security.

He emphasized that every effort should be made to expedite the Chemical Weapons Convention’s universalization, especially by pressuring the Israeli regime to ratify it immediately and without any more delay.

Israel is the sole possessor of nuclear arms in West Asia. The regime, which pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, is estimated to possess 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.

In contrast to Iran, Israel has not ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).