Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the current humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas was the result of the failure of Washington and Tel Aviv to eliminate Hamas through the war.

“Today, we see that the US and Israel are not capable of destroying Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is a liberation and legitimate movement and will remain in Palestine,” he said in an interview with Lebanon's al-Mayadeen TV channel published on Wednesday. 

“The winners of the war are the Palestinian nation and resistance. So far, the United States and the Zionist regime have been the main losers of this war.”

Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas conducted Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed over 15,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and left vast swathes of the coastal enclave in ruins.

An additional 7,000 Palestinians are missing and believed to be under the rubble in Gaza, home to more than two million Palestinians who are being subjected to a “complete siege” imposed by Israel.

An extended six-day truce in Gaza brought a halt to Israeli attacks and allowed aid agencies to deliver humanitarian assistance to displaced Palestinians, who are in urgent need of safe and sustained access to drinking water, food, health, fuel, and medicine.

Amir-Abdollahian emphasized that the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza has provided a political opportunity for the region to stay away from the war.

“The US must choose between the continuations of this situation as well as the region's separation from the war, and the continuation of a worse situation,” he pointed out.

US messages

The top Iranian diplomat also said that the US has sent several messages to Iran, asking the country to exercise restraint.

Washington, he added, also said that it does not seek an expansion of the war and asked Tehran to recommend resistance groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen not to act against American and Israeli bases.

“There are groups today in Iraq and Syria that act against the US upon their own decision. They do not get our permission. They are not under Iran’s command. We have clearly said that Iran does not have any proxy group or organization in the region,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

“We told all actors and the US that if you want restraint on the part of Iran, [Lebanon’s] Hezbollah, and other sides…, you should practically seek to stop the war and not take sides with the Zionist occupation and participate in its crimes.”

He further stressed that the Islamic Republic does not seek an expansion of the scope of the war, warning that such a case is likely if the Gaza conflict escalates.

Meanwhile, the Iranian foreign minister said new fronts in southern Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq rushed to the help of Gaza, noting that some Arab-Muslim nations showed that they cannot remain indifferent to the massacre of civilians in the Palestinian enclave.

The resistance, he asserted, produces and procures its necessary equipment and weapons.

Amir-Abdollahian reiterated Iran’s solution to the Palestine issue that involves a referendum among all Palestinians, including Jews, Christians, and Muslims. 

But after 70 years of occupation, the Israeli regime showed in the last 76 days that it is the same usurping genocidal criminal entity. Democratic gestures and talk of democracy for the Israeli regime is a bitter irony of our history, Amir-Abdollahian noted.

He also urged the international community to focus on Israel’s nuclear disarmament and the trial of Zionist war criminals.

The “bitter reality” in today’s world is that the UN Security Council issued no resolution, the Human Rights Council held no session and no fact-finding committee was formed to investigate Israeli genocide and war crimes in Gaza, he said.