TEHRAN, May 31, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher
Ghalibaf said any negotiations with the United States would be “futile” as he
delivered his first major speech to the conservative-dominated chamber on
Sunday.
Ghalibaf, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ air force, was
elected speaker on Thursday after February elections that swung the balance in
the legislature towards ultra-conservatives.
The newly formed parliament “considers negotiations with and appeasement of
America, as the axis of global arrogance, to be futile and harmful,” said
Ghalibaf.
He also vowed revenge for the US drone attack in January that killed Qasem
Soleimani, the commander of the Guards’ foreign operations arm.
“Our strategy in confronting the terrorist America is to finish the revenge
for martyr Soleimani’s blood,” he told lawmakers in a televised address.
This, he said, would entail “the total expulsion of America’s terrorist
army from the region”.
Decades-old tensions between Tehran and Washington have soared in the past
year, with the sworn arch enemies twice appearing to come to the brink of a
direct confrontation.
The tensions have been rising since 2018, when President Donald Trump
withdrew the US from a landmark nuclear accord and began reimposing crippling
sanctions on Iran’s economy.
That was followed by the US drone strike near Baghdad airport in January
that killed Soleimani, a hugely popular figure in the Islamic republic.
Days later, Iran fired a barrage of missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq
in retaliation, but Trump opted against taking any military action in
response.
Ghalibaf called for ties to be improved with neighbours and with “great
powers who were friends with us in hard times and share significant strategic
relations”, without naming them.
The 58-year-old Ghalibaf is a three-time presidential candidate who lost
out to current incumbent Hassan Rouhani at the last election in 2017.
The newly elected speaker had also served as Tehran mayor and the Islamic
republic’s police chief before taking up his latest post.