In a post on his X account on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Esmaeil Baqaei pointed to fundamental contradictions in the US position, arguing that Washington cannot claim exclusive authority to define terrorism while waging wars, carrying out assassinations and causing civilian casualties.

“The narrative advanced by the US Secretary of War on the anniversary of 9/11 is riddled with fundamental contradictions: you cannot wage aggression, carry out cowardly assassinations, and inflict civilian casualties while simultaneously claiming exclusive authority to define terrorism and determine whose violence is legitimate,” the Iranian spokesman wrote.

“The perpetrators of 9/11 were not Iranians; they were the very same people whom the US itself had armed, organized, or otherwise cultivated in the preceding decades,” he added.

“Yet the so-called ‘war on terror’ that followed brought Afghanistan and Iraq years of war, occupation, civilian deaths, and devastation on a massive scale,” Baqaei noted.

“Against this backdrop, invoking the anniversary of 9/11 to justify a reckless and unlawful war against Iran is utterly absurd. A criminal war that has involved the assassination of officials of a sovereign state and the targeting of civilians, including women and children, cannot be made morally coherent simply by wrapping it in the language of counterterrorism,” he stated.