“Launching an attack on Syria… has neither political nor humanitarian justification,” Ayatollah Rafsanjani said Wednesday following comments by US officials expressing readiness to attack the country which is already torn with a massive Western-backed insurgency.

Rafsanjani also expressed concern over the future of the Syrian people who are living under threats of domestic and foreign attacks, calling for negotiations rather than confrontation to settle the ongoing crisis in the Arab country. 

The war rhetoric against Syria intensified after foreign-backed opposition forces accused President Bashar al-Assad’s government of having launched a chemical attack on militant strongholds in the suburbs of Damascus last week.

A number of Western countries, including the US, France, and the UK, were quick to adopt the rhetoric of war against Syria despite the fact that Damascus categorically rejected the claim, and announced later that the chemical attack had actually been carried out by the militants themselves as a black operation.

Iran, among a number of other countries, has warned against the consequences of a military strike against Syria, saying that the fallout from a military action would engulf the entire region.

Syria has been struggling with a deadly unrest since 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have been killed and a total of 7.8 million of others displaced due to the violence.

SHI/SHI