Invoking 9/11 to justify war against Iran is ‘utterly absurd’: Tehran
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has rejected US attempts to invoke the anniversary of the September 11 attacks to justify a “reckless and unlawful war” against Iran, saying Washington’s narrative on terrorism is riddled with fundamental contradictions.
In a post on X early Saturday, marking the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Esmaeil Baghaei criticized remarks by the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on terrorism and Iran.
“The narrative advanced by the US Secretary of War on the anniversary of 9/11 is riddled with fundamental contradictions,” he said.
Baghaei said the US could not simultaneously wage aggression, carry out assassinations, and cause civilian casualties while claiming exclusive authority to define terrorism and determine whose violence was legitimate.
“The perpetrators of 9/11 were not Iranians; they were the very same people whom the US itself had armed, organized, or otherwise cultivated in the preceding decades,” he said.
The narrative advanced by the U.S. Secretary of War on the anniversary of 9/11 is riddled with fundamental contradictions: you cannot wage aggression, carry out cowardly assassinations, and inflict civilian casualties while simultaneously claiming exclusive authority to define… pic.twitter.com/a9fyALL9mC
— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) September 11, 2026
He also criticized the US-led “war on terror,” saying the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had brought years of war, occupation, civilian deaths, and widespread devastation.
“Against this backdrop, invoking the anniversary of 9/11 to justify a reckless and unlawful war against Iran is utterly absurd,” Baghaei said.
He further rejected attempts to justify the US war against Iran through counterterrorism rhetoric, stressing that the war involved the assassination of officials of a sovereign state and attacks on civilians, including women and children.
“A criminal war that has involved the assassination of officials of a sovereign state and the targeting of civilians, including women and children, cannot be made morally coherent simply by wrapping it in the language of counterterrorism,” he said.
The American invasion of Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people in the United States. Washington presented the foolhardy military adventure as the opening battle in a so-called “war on terror.”
Yet after 20 years of brutal military occupation, trillions of dollars spent, and enormous human suffering resulting from the US-led coalition’s horrendous war crimes, the occupiers have not achieved a political settlement or eliminated the forces they had vowed to defeat.
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Invoking 9/11 to justify war against Iran is ‘utterly absurd’: Tehran
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