News- Middle East: The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the Israeli regime bears the “legal, political and criminal” responsibility for the 1982 kidnapping of four Iranian diplomats in Lebanon.

In a Saturday statement on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the abduction of the Iranian diplomats, the IRGC emphasized the importance of clarifying their fate.

On July 4, 1982, Ahmad Motovasselian, a military attaché at Tehran's Embassy in Beirut, Mohsen Mousavi, the Iranian chargé d'affaires in Lebanon, Taqi Rastegar Moqaddam, an employee of the Embassy, and Kazem Akhavan, a photographer for the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), were abducted by Israeli-affiliated armed groups.

The IRGC said the 42nd anniversary of this “terrorist” event comes only few days after the end of a 12-day war imposed by the Israeli regime and the evil and terrorist United States against Iran.

“Iran’s decisive and deterrent response to the war further revealed the depth of the incapacity, fragility, and legitimacy crisis of this regime,” it said.

It noted that the Israeli regime has committed heinous crimes over the past decades against regional nations, including its ongoing genocidal war in Palestine and the assassination of top officials of the resistance front.

The IRGC criticized international organizations and the self-proclaimed defender of human rights for failing to take an effective measure after four decades to pursue the “crime” of the Iranian diplomats’ abduction.

Therefore, the IRGC once again reminds the United Nations, the Human Rights Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross of their responsibilities vis-à-vis the case, urging them to undertake effective, and non-selective follow-ups, it said.

The IRGC hailed the efforts made by Lebanon and called on the Arab country to form a joint fact-finding committee in cooperation with international organizations.

It warned the Israeli regime and its supporters that they would not be safe from their past crimes, “but every act of aggression and treachery will accelerate the process of collapse of this fake regime."

The Iranian Foreign Ministry earlier in the day decried as an “act of terrorism” the kidnapping of the Iranian diplomats, reiterating the Islamic Republic’s call for the formation of a fact-finding group to determine the fate of the abductees.

“There is ample evidence, as repeatedly stated, and copious indications proving that the Iranian diplomats were abducted by an armed group inside Lebanon during the occupation of Lebanese soil by the Zionist regime, handed over to the occupying forces, and transferred to the occupied territories,” the ministry said in a statement.

Source: Press TV