In an interview recorded on July 17, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria challenged Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani in an interview on the alleged plot. Bagheri Kani stood his ground. “I told you explicitly that we would resort to legal and judicial procedures and frameworks at the domestic level and international level in order to bring the perpetrators and military advisors of General Soleimani’s assassination to justice,” Bagheri Kani countered.
Pressed further as to whether that meant not using violent measures, Bagheri Kani said, “We will only resort to Iranian and international legal and judicial procedures.”
“Until now, we have done it, and this is our right, and of course we will continue it. And the Americans openly said that, that they assassinated the senior Iranian military commander. So it is our natural right in order to follow this issue, and those who are accused in this case, they should be brought to justice in a—in a just court,” Bagheri Kani said.
The irony is that the matter at issue for Iran is that the then-Trump administration assassinated an official of a foreign government, an act of questionable legality that nearly triggered a war between the two countries.
Zakaria’s full interview with Kani will air on Sunday, July 21, at 10 a.m. ET on “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
Hours after CNN first broke “the story” of the alleged Iranian plot, Politico followed with its own report hyping the claim, but the set-up actually had occurred a week earlier, though Politico doesn’t call it that. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued a statement on July 9 that Iran has been behind the pro-Palestinian protests of the last few months in the U.S. “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years,” Haines said (without mentioning the CIA’s notorious use of this method). “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
