GENEVA, March 24. /TASS/. The strikes by Israel and the United States on oil storage facilities in Tehran earlier this month meet all criteria under international law to be defined as ecocide and amount to war crimes, according to a report released by the Iranian permanent mission to the UN in Geneva.
According to the report, on the night of March 7, fighter jets struck three facilities containing oil storage tanks in Tehran. The mission stated that these facilities had "a combined capacity of approximately 215 million liters of fuel." It noted that the incident caused a mass evacuation of civilians from the Iranian capital, home to around 13 million people, and led to high levels of air pollution that under normal conditions would only be seen after "an extremely severe industrial accident, such as the complete explosion of a refinery."
"Based on a preliminary assessment, it can be stated with a level of certainty that such acts violate the fundamental rights of civilians and civilian property and, pursuant to the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes," the document points out. "Furthermore, the criminal attack on Tehran's fuel reservoirs meets, by all criteria of international law, the definition of ‘ecocide’ or an environmental crime," it added. In this regard, Iran calls on the international community to hold Israel and its allies, namely the United States, "accountable in international organizations and forums."