SAEDNEWS: Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says the United States uses sanctions to gag the critics of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Baghaei made the remarks on Wednesday in response to a post on the social media platform X by former European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, in which he slammed the EU’s failure to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement over the Gaza genocide.
“The European Council failed yesterday to take a decision on Israel’s violation of the Association Agreement´s Human Rights clause. But this is in itself a decision: Europe decides not to punish Israel’s continued war crimes and allows the Gaza genocide to proceed unabated,” Borrell said earlier in the day.
EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels on Tuesday to weigh possible actions against Israel following the bloc’s own review, which found that the occupying regime is violating its human rights obligations under the terms of the association agreement.
In a series of statements on X on Tuesday, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, urged the EU to suspend the association agreement, citing the bloc's legal obligation under international law.
She warned that "maintaining trade with an economy inextricably tied to occupation, apartheid, and genocide is complicity."
Baghaei commented on Borrell’s post, noting that the EU’s inaction on the agreement with Tel Aviv aligns with the US crackdown on Israel’s critics and the West's complicity in the Israeli crimes.
“And this is just in line with the US sanctioning of Palestine Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to silence any critic of Israel's continuing genocide and atrocity crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Last Wednesday, as part of its effort to punish critics of the Israeli regime's 21-month genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, the US State Department sanctioned Albanese, blaming her for prompting the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant over genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 58,573 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
