PARIS: Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday urged countries to condemn “ecocide” in the Middle East caused by “wars of aggression”.

Pezeshkian said the conflicts in Gaza and the wider Middle East had inflicted a significant toll on nature that extended beyond borders and required “international solutions”.

“What has occurred in our region as a result of wars of aggression is ecocide, or environmental genocide, and it must be condemned,” Pezeshkian told a UN biodiversity summit in Armenia’s capital Yerevan.

The president denied that Tehran sought nuclear weapons, expressed readiness for dialogue and condemned US sanctions during talks with Georgia’s prime minister at the event.

In his meeting with Irakli Kobakhidze, Pezeshkian also called for closer ties with Georgia, weeks after Tbilisi cut aviation links between the two countries following US sanctions targeting Iranian airlines.

“Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, and we consider the malicious propaganda against our country to be lies,” the president said, according to a statement from his office.

“We have always been ready for dialogue. They think they can force us to surrender, but we will not bow to coercion,” he added, calling US sanctions against Tehran “unjustifiable and inhumane”.

In his meeting with Kobakhidze, the Georgian premier, Pezeshkian called for a clear timetable to expand cooperation between Tehran and Tbilisi.

An agency report quoted Kobakhidze as saying he opposed foreign interference in neighbouring countries’ internal affairs, but his office made no mention of those remarks in its own account of the meeting.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2026