Leader Criticizes West’s Double Standards on WMD

Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei censured western countries for adopting a double-standard policy toward the use of weapons of mass destruction, reminding them of their support for the slain Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the latter's war on Iran in the 1980s.

The Leader made the statement on Wednesday in a meeting with a group of wartime commanders, veterans and artists on the occasion of Sacred Defense Week marking the anniversary of the 1980-88 Iraq-imposed war on Iran, Press TV reported.

Despite the West's current "ballyhoo over accusations of using chemical weapons, they provided the Saddam regime with chemical weapons used not only in the war fronts but also in cities like Sardasht [against civilians]," he said.

The Leader said the Islamic Republic was under economic and political sanctions in those years and the Iranian nation’s voice could not be heard in the world as global media was "under the hegemony of Zionists".

Referring to France and Germany's support for the Iraqi regime during the war, Ayatollah Khamenei said, “Why shouldn’t the French and German nations know what their governments did to the Iranian nation in those eight years?”

During the Iraq-imposed war, "Iran was not even allowed to use the most basic equipment and facilities like barbed wires, while the other side was provided with the most modern war equipment and even chemical weapons,” he added.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranian people were killed in the eight-year war and many more were affected by the chemical weapons like mustard gas used by Saddam's despotic regime.

Sardasht was the third biggest populated city in the world, after Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to be deliberately targeted with weapons of mass destruction. It was also the first city in the world to be attacked with poisonous gas.

Thanks to the support offered by the US and other western states, Iraq once possessed a huge arsenal of chemical weapons.