Trending 
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told world leaders on Wednesday that Iran had been a victim of terrorism, as he condemned the US and Israeli strikes that began the war and called for international cooperation to achieve lasting peace and stability.
Opening his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Pezeshkian focused on the February 28 strike on an elementary school in the southern city of Minab, saying children and teachers were killed despite having committed no crime.
“They were innocent, had committed no crimes,” Pezeshkian said.
Iranian officials had said that at least 120 children and 26 teachers died in the attack.
Pezeshkian said the school was hit with weapons used by the United States and Israel, insisting that Iran was a victim of terrorism.
The US Department of Defence said earlier this month that an investigation into the incident was still ongoing.
A UN fact-finding mission concluded earlier in September that the school strike may have amounted to a war crime. The White House, however, said Iran was the only party in the conflict that had committed war crimes.
Pezeshkian also rejected mounting pressure on Iran, saying sanctions and what he described as bullying would only strengthen the resistance of the Iranian people.
Referring to US President Donald Trump’s address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Pezeshkian said military strength should not replace legitimacy, while war and coercion should not take the place of dialogue and diplomacy.
He said Iran would not submit to such pressure and called on countries to work together to pursue what he described as “true peace and stability”.
Pezeshkian said Iran was extending its hand to the international community from a position of strength and a belief in cooperation, warning that countries in the region could not achieve security individually.
He called for a future in which security, fairness, justice and human dignity are recognised as rights for all people.
“We must not build a world in which military power replaces legitimacy, terrorism replaces politics and negotiations, and war replaces dialog and diplomacy,” he told world leaders.
“Iran extends her hand towards the world, we invite the world. We call the world, not out of weakness, but out of a deep belief in our own power and steadfastness to cooperate and collaborate, because of a deep belief that no one in this region will have security alone.
“Either we will build it together, or we will have to live under insecurity together. We seek to think about a worthy future in which security, fairness, justice, human dignity will become unalienable rights for all people, for all humans,” he added.
