Ali Akbar Velayati (pictured) said that Samir Kuntar would become a role model for Muslim youth in the region. Photo: Wikipedia.

A senior Iranian official said on Wednesday that assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Samir Kuntar would become a role model for the Muslim youth of the Middle East, Iranian pro-regime student newspaper ISNA reported.

Ali Akbar Velayati, chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council’s Center for Strategic Research and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s foreign affairs adviser, made his comments while extending condolences for Kuntar’s killing and “congratulations” for Kuntar’s “martyrdom.”

Velayati said, “The news reached us about the martyrdom of the role model of the liberated Lebanese [prisoners] and it aroused the regret and sadness of millions of Muslims and preachers of freedom around the world.”

He added that Kuntar “endured prison and captivity for a period longer (sic) than 30 years and resisted against the oppression [carried out by Israel], and he will transform into a role model of the Muslim youth in the region.”

Velayati said that the manner in which the “Zionist entity” had killed this “symbol of the Resistance” points to the “terrorist nature of the artificial entity [Israel] which uses any means to achieve its accursed goals.”

Velayati, who chairs the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening, said the Assembly also offered its condolences on Kuntar’s death and added its congratulations to the “Islamic umma and all of the preachers of freedom, particularly the Lebanese resistance front [Hezbollah] lead by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the family of the martyr, on the martyrdom of the role model of the liberated [prisoners] of the resistance front.”