President Raeisi at UN: Global Americanization project has failed

Addressing the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), President Ebrahim Raeisi says the global Americanization project has failed.

“The world is irreversibly transitioning into a novel order. The Western domination equation does not work for the world anymore, and the old liberal order that used to serve the interests of imperialists and insatiable capitalists, has been brushed to one side,” Raeisi told the session in New York on Tuesday.

“The project to Americanize the world has failed,” he noted, adding, “The Iranian nation prides itself on playing, thanks to the Islamic Revolution, the biggest role in unmasking the imperialists in the East and the West.”

Iran’s regional, intl. policy

Elsewhere in his remarks, the president noted that Iran had opened up a new chapter of mutually beneficial relations with its neighbors.

“The Islamic Republic’s neighborly policy is a benevolent policy for the region. We firmly clasp any hand that is extended [towards us] in friendship,” Raeisi said.

The Islamic Republic supports maximal intra-regional and inter-regional economic and political convergence, and is interested in interaction with the entire world on the basis of justice, he stated.

On the Qur’an’s desecration

The president, meanwhile, condemned the desecration earlier this year of the Holy Qur’an in Sweden and Denmark.

“The Noble Qur’an has banned affront to ideas and beliefs…,” he reminded, asking, “What defines humanity and elevates human values better than God Almighty’s word?”

“This is not the first time that they burn God’s words, and suppose that they have muffled the heaven’s voice forever,” he said, adding, “But the Qur’anic teachings for the human communities shall never burn, and the flames of insult and distortion shall be no match for the truth.”

Raeisi said Islamophobia in its whatever form, whether it is the burning of the Holy Qur’an or banning of the Islamic dress code at schools, amounts to hatemongering.

“There is a bigger design behind these instances of hatemongering, and relegating them to the ‘freedom of speech’ is misleading,” the Iranian statesman cautioned.

Iran against division of world into new ‘East, West’

Now that the world’s independent countries are moving towards further cooperation and convergence, Raeisi said, “we are witnessing endeavor on the part of some powers towards kindling the flames of conflict across various regions.”

Maintaining a Cold War mentality, these powers are after dividing the international community into its former blocs, he said.

“This measure is reactionary and does disservice to nations’ security and welfare. The Islamic Republic firmly believes that no new East and West should be allowed to take shape [across the world].”

‘Iran nation victorious against foreign plots’

Raeisi hailed that last year, the Iranian nation had managed to overcome “the biggest media offensive and psychological warfare in history.”

He was referring to the incessant media and political campaign that followed the unfortunate death in police custody of a young Iranian girl named Mahsa Amini.

The president said — in their efforts to sow chaos across the country by misusing the tragedy –, certain Western countries and their intelligence services had committed a “miscalculation” by underestimating the Iranian nation’s strength.

West’s selective approach towards terrorism

Raeisi denounced some Western states for their “using terrorism as a foreign policy instrument.”

He reminded that some European countries, despite laying claim to fighting terrorism, had turned into a safe haven for a terrorist group that has shed the blood of more than 17,000 Iranian civilians and officials, referring to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO).

“Discrimination in fighting terrorism serves as a go-ahead to terrorists,” Raeisi warned.

‘Israel can’t be a partner to peace’

The Iranian president considered the Israeli regime to be the world’s last entity that is “based on apartheid and racism, which has been founded on the basis of war, occupation, terrorism, and violation of peoples’ rights.”

Such an entity “cannot be a partner to peace,” he asserted.

“Has not the time come for putting an end to 75 years of occupation of the Palestinian land and oppression of its people and massacre of its women and children, and for the Palestinian nation’s rights to be recognized?”

On the war in Ukraine

Raeisi reasserted Iran’s opposition to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

“We do not consider warfare in Europe to be in the interest of any European party,” he said.

Iran welcomes whatever initiative that is aimed at ending the conflict and initiation of the political process, he said, and voiced the Islamic Republic’s readiness to play a constructive role towards cessation of the hostilities.