This year's assassination of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was "an extraordinarily dangerous act", Iran's Press TV cites renowned US linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky as saying.
According to him, "nothing like that happened during the Second World War or during the Cold War".
The 91-year-old luminary also argued that Soleimani's assassination was "as if Iran had decided to murder [US Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo and a major general along with him at the Mexico City International Airport".
Chomsky pointed to the "astonishing" fact that the general's killing is "praised" in the US, which he said "shows how extreme the internal assumption is, that the United States is a rouge state, which has nothing to do with international law or obligations".
In light of this, the US professor also touched upon the US withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018.
He described the move as a "violation of international law", and counter to UN Security Council Resolution 2231 authorising the Iran deal.
US-Iranian Tensions
Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in a US drone strike on their car at the Baghdad International Airport on 3 January, in an attack authorised by President Donald Trump.
This led to a major escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington, with Iran officially responding by launching air strikes against two Iraqi military bases housing US troops.
US-Iranian tensions have persisted since 8 May 2018, when President Trump announced Washington's unilateral exit from the JCPOA, also reinstating harsh economic sanctions against Tehran. Exactly a year later, Tehran declared that it would start scaling down its key JCPOA commitments.
