Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described
on Sunday US missile strike against the Syrian Ash Sha’irat military
airfield as a strategic mistake.
"What Americans did was a strategic mistake,
and they are repeating the same mistakes done by their predecessors,” Supreme Leader said at a meeting with senior Iranian Armed Forces commanders
in Tehran, as quoted by the Fars news agency.
He also accused the United States of supporting terrorism in the region.
"Former US officials created ISIL [Daesh] or
helped it, and present officials are reinvigorating ISIL and similar
groups,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
On Thursday night, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise
missiles at the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha’irat. US President
Donald Trump said that the attack was a response to the alleged chemical
weapon use in Syria's Idlib province on Tuesday, which resulted in the
death of over 80 people, an incident which Washington blames on the
Syrian government.
The
Syrian foreign minister denied the government’s involvement in the
Idlib incident, saying it had never nor would it ever use chemical
weapons on either civilians or terrorists operating in the country.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that the airstrike
near Khan Shaykhun by the Syrian air force hit a terrorist warehouse
that stored chemical weapons slated for delivery to Iraq, and called
on the UN Security Council to launch a proper investigation into the
incident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that groundless
accusations in the chemical weapons incident in Syria's Idlib were
unacceptable before the investigation into the matter had been carried
out while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday criticized the US
missile attack as a violation of the international law.
The US missile attack claimed the lives of 10 people, an officer
of the Syrian Armed Forces told Sputnik. The Russian Defense Ministry
said that the attack left two Syrian servicemen missing, four killed,
and six suffering severe injuries from the fire. Homs Governor Talal
Barazi said Friday that at least two civilians from a nearby village and
five Syrian servicemen were killed.
