In a symbolic pushback to President Donald Trump’s declaration on the status of Jerusalem, Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday voted to recognize the contested city as the capital of the Palestinians. The Iranian parliament voted in favor of a bill that recognized the city as the Palestinian capital, or the capital of the “State of Palestine,” the entity recognized by the United Nations as a member state. Of 290 lawmakers, 207 voted in favor of the bill.
Ali Larijani, speaker of the Parliament of Iran, said that the bill’s timing was “important,” given Trump’s December 6 announcement that he had ordered the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, upending decades of U.S. foreign policy in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “It comes in response to the recent U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in hopes of dealing a blow to Muslims,” he said, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu. READ MORE
