Tehran, Oct 11 — Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday the US-Israeli attacks on Iran's oil, refinery, and energy facilities during the 40-day war have created serious environmental hazards.
As confirmed by the United Nations Environment Programme, the consequent fires and burning of hydrocarbon materials released dangerous chemical compounds, Araghchi said at the International Conference on "Ecocide, A Silent War Crime" in Tehran, according to an Iranian Foreign Ministry statement.
Araghchi said the released pollutants can travel through air to soil and water, even entering the food chain, stressing that their impacts can outlast both the time and place of the attack, the statement read, Xinhua News Agency reported.
He also pointed to the "deep and persistent" environmental toll of military attacks in Gaza and Lebanon, adding that Iran maintains that international law must not turn a blind eye to wartime destruction of the environment and fundamental human rights, it added.
US President Donald Trump has said that the United States could end its military involvement in Iran immediately but would not do so without guarantees that Tehran would never acquire nuclear weapons, even as he suggested the seven-month conflict could soon come to an end.
“We could leave right now, but we have to guarantee that they can't have it in the future. And we'll get that,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews after returning from a campaign rally in Tennessee.
Asked why he would not declare victory after claiming that American military operations had prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Trump said the United States needed to ensure that the threat did not re-emerge.
“Because I have to keep it that way. I don't want to do it in two years. We have to have a guarantee that they won't have it in the future,” he said.
The remarks followed an address in Clarksville, Tennessee, where Trump presented the military campaign against Iran as a major achievement of his administration while acknowledging the American lives lost during the conflict.
Trump said the United States had been engaged in the conflict for nearly seven months, contrasting its duration and casualties with earlier American wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“Now in Iran, we've been there for seven months,” he said, before referring to the 18 American personnel he said had been killed.
“We have wounded, but we've stopped them from having a nuclear weapon,” Trump told supporters.