Tehran will "never bow to the will and pressure of the US and its allies," Chief of General Staff of Iranian Armed Forces Maj. Gen. Mohammed Bagheri said at the conference, which gathered military leaders from 35 countries including India, Turkey and Australia. This year's symposium is being held in Tehran.
According to a dispatch from Mehr News Agency, the general spoke about the dissolution of "the traditional bipolar world order" and the rise of new powers in the East and West. "Certain powers and regional actors are unwilling to accept the facts of the new world," he said.
Bagheri later got more specific. He called out the recent US, UK and France-backed missile strikes on several targets in Syria as "illegal" — which accords with what University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle told Radio Sputnik in the aftermath of the attack.
Bagheri also criticized London, Washington and Paris for exporting weapons "to various countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, to plunge the Middle East into war." While US media outlets have been quick to call attention to chaos and tragedy as it arises in Syria — perhaps especially to versions of events that can be used to call for military intervention in the country — far less attention has been paid to Yemen, where Saudi Arabian bombs supported by US technology, as well as a naval blockade, have created the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"The widespread military presence of certain major powers and their interventions in the Indian Ocean region has caused nothing but further insecurity, such as the relentless airstrikes on Yemeni people," the general pointed out.