Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called upon Iran to show more self-restraint in the wake of the Israeli airstrike on the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in the Syrian capital city of Damascus.
During a telephone conversation with her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Thursday night, Wong stated that Canberra is “deeply concerned” by signs that Tehran is planning a retaliatory military strike on the Tel Aviv regime.
The top Australian diplomat went on to urge Iran to “use its influence in the region to promote stability.”
For his part, Amir-Abdollahian criticized the UN Security Council’s failure to condemn the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus,
“Some Western governments do not condemn this terrorist act, which clearly violates international law and international conventions. Whilst they continue to support the crimes of Zionists, they are simply urging Iran to exercise self-restraint,” he stated.
The Iranian foreign minister also underlined the need for greater pressure on Israel so that it would stop the war and genocide in Gaza, and end the policy of starving Gazans and imposing famine on the residents of the coastal territory.
‘Legitimate defense with aim of punishing aggressor a necessity’
Separately in a Thursday post on X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, Amir-Abdollahian pointed to the conversations with his German, British, and Australian counterparts, Annalena Baerbock, David Cameron, and Penny Wong, pointing to the need for “punishing the aggressor.”
“When the Zionist regime tramples on the international law and Vienna Conventions and violates the immunity of diplomatic agents and premises, and the UNSC is incapable of issuing a statement in condemnation of the terrorist attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, legitimate defense with the objective of punishing the aggressor becomes a necessity,” he wrote.
He emphasized that he has demanded his counterparts to explicitly express their positions in condemnation of the Israeli strike on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus.
“Iran is not seeking escalation of hostility; but the return of sustainable security to the sensitive West Asia region is tied to controlling warmongering and deranged leaders of the Zionist regime and the viable cessation of this regime’s war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” the Iranian foreign minister pointed out.
Amir-Abdollahian stated that he has received congratulatory messages from the three foreign ministers on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
On April 1, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, located next to the embassy building in Damascus’s Mezzeh district.
The attack killed two senior Iranian military personnel who were on an advisory mission to Syria as well as five of their accompanying officers.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, and his deputy General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi were among the seven martyrs of the terrorist attack.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has vowed that Iran will “punish” Israel and make the evil regime “regret” its crime of assassinating the country’s military advisors in Syria.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi has also said Israel had resorted to indiscriminate assassinations after back-to-back failures in the face of the resistance, warning that the regime’s latest crime against Iranian military advisers in Syria “will not go unanswered.”
