Iran says Israeli attacks on Syria smokescreen for Tel Aviv's crimes against Palestinians

“We strongly condemn the ongoing attacks by the Israeli regime on Syrian territory,” Amir Saeid Iravani, the Islamic Republic’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations, said before a UN Security Council session on Syria on Thursday.

“The Israeli regime commits such aggressions to divert the attention of the international community from the daily atrocious crimes [it] is committing against the Palestinian people,” he added.

Israel has frequently attacked the positions of Syria’s military and its allies since 2011, when the Arab country found itself in the grip of rampant foreign-backed violence and terrorism.

The regime’s attacks mostly target the positions of Syria’s allies that have been aiding the country in its battle against foreign-sponsored terror groups.

Damascus has repeatedly complained to the UN over the Israeli assaults, urging the world body’s Security Council to take action against Tel Aviv’s crimes. Its demands, however, have fallen on deaf ears.

On foreign military presence in Syria

Iravani, meanwhile, asserted that “the fight against terrorism should not be utilized as a pretext to violate Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The United States and scores of its allies launched a military campaign against the Arab country in 2014 under the pretext of fighting the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh.

The group had emerged in Syria and neighboring Iraq earlier that year as Washington was running out of excuses to extend its meddling in the West Asia region or enlarge it in scale.

Washington sustains the military presence in Syria, although, Damascus and its allies dealt a decisive defeat to the terror outfit in 2017.

“We firmly believe that the primary solution to the Syrian crisis lies in political means, as military actions will only further complicate the situation,” Iravani said.

The Iranian official further denounced the “illicit exploitation” of Syria’s resources, referring to the US’s underway smuggling of Syria’s oil and grain amid the Arab country’s dire economic situation.