Opposition MP Mujibur Rahman said that Indian and Sri Lankan responses to the targeted assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were similar.

PM Narendra Modi’s BJP and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s NPP remained silent on the joint US-Israeli sneak attack on Iran, while it was engaged in negotiations with those same nations. Top SJB spokesman Rahman told The Island yesterday. Both governments speak of the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East without making any reference to US-Israeli aggression, the Colombo District lawmaker said.

President Dissanayake cut a sorry figure in Parliament, on Tuesday, when he dealt with the developing situation in the Middle East, MP Rahman said. Acknowledging that both India and Sri Lanka had been deeply trapped in the US machinations, MP Rahman questioned the failure on the part of President Dissanayake to at least mention the killing of over 700 Iranians, including their supreme leader.

Pointing out that President Dissanayake is the leader of both the NPP and the JVP, MP Rahman said that both political parties, particularly the latter, owed an explanation regarding the government’s response to the situation. The former UNPer said that if the JVP/NPP still remained in the Opposition, with just a handful of MPs, they would have demanded from whoever had the parliamentary majority to condemn Khamenei’s assassination. They would have definitely launched protests opposite the US Embassy here, Rahman said, alleging that the incumbent dispensation seemed to be ensnared in US political-military-social project.

Commenting on severe Congress criticism of the Indian government’s silence over Khamenei’s assassination and violation of Iranian sovereignty, lawmaker Rahman alleged that the NPP government seemed to be following the Indian line. The MP asserted that both countries acted in a similar manner when the US abducted Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on 03 January.

MP Rahman said that the US and Israel unleashed terror close on the heels of PM’s Modi’s visit to Tel Aviv, his second to the Jewish state since 2017.

Responding to The Island queries, MP Rahman said that when he dealt with the situation in the Middle East, in the aftermath of US-Israeli actions, Dr. Rizvie Salih, MP, was on the Chair. “I used that opportunity to ask Deputy Speaker Salih how he remained silent when the NPP pursued policies contrary to his beliefs. NPP’s response to Khamenei’s assassination proved that they have completely shed their original policies,” MP Rahman said.

MP Rahman said that the seven MoUs the NPP government entered into with India in April last year, and the new understanding with the US, had compromised the country. The SJBer said that the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government declaration of a one year moratorium on foreign research vessels’ visits to Sri Lanka, in 2024, was made under duress. That moratorium remained though the NPP government promised to announce its decision, MP Rahman said, adding that Sri Lanka no longer could decide on matters of importance on its own.

The outspoken lawmaker said that Iran supported Sri Lanka’s development efforts. According to him, the Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project (UOMDP), the main Iranian funded project here, was launched in April 2008. The project was inaugurated in April 2024, the MP said, adding that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who had been here for the inauguration of the project during President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s time, was also killed in the ongoing war.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served as Iranian President, from 2005 until 2013, was killed in an Israeli-US air strike on his residence at Narnak, north-east of Tehran the Iranian Labour News Agency reported on Sunday.

MP Rahman said that those who had been fighting for the rights of women and children were conveniently silent over the deaths caused by US-Israel attacks on a girl’s school at Minab causing the deaths of 165 children and staff.

By Shamindra Ferdinando