Top Security Official:

S. Arabia's Enmity towards Iran Nothing New

Rasa - Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani voiced regret that Saudi Arabia has for a long time showed hostility towards a Muslim country like Iran, blasting Riyadh for financial and arms support for the terrorists in Syria.

News ID: 434927

Date: 23 November 2017 - 21:28

RNA - "The list of the Saudis' enmities towards Iran is extensive but we have shown self-restraint. The list of their measures against the region and the resistance front is also extensive. They strengthened the terrorists in Syria by financial, training and arms support for six years," Shamkhani said in an interview with the state TV on Tuesday night.

"This enmity is nothing new and has mostly ended with no result; this anomosity is mostly the result of imprudence rather than thought and strategy and is meant to cover the internal crises resulting from the power transition in the country," he added.

In relevant remarks on Monday, the Iranian foreign ministry blasted the Arab League (AL) for surrendering to Saudi Arabia's pressures to issue a "worthless" statement against Tehran, stressing that the current regional problems can be resolved by giving up obedience to Israel's policies.

"Now that Saudi Arabia has succeeded in issuing a completely false and distorted statement under the name of the AL foreign ministers by exerting pressure and extensive political propaganda to implement the Zionist regime's policies to widen the differences in the region and diverting the Islamic nations and governments of the issue of occupation of Palestine as the main issue of the Islamic Ummah, the Islamic Republic of Iran invites Saudi Arabia to end its brutal attacks against their Arab fellows in Yemen as soon as possible so that the Yemeni children, women and civilians are not burned in the fire of its malice and in a bid to gain some result from such statements," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Monday.

"The solution to the current problems in the region whose major part is the result of Saudi Arabia's unfruitful policies is not issuing worthless statements but the solution is giving up compliance with the Zionist regime's policies," he added.

"Iran also wants Saudi Arabia to end the policy of pressuring its Arab brothers in Lebanon, Qatar and the entire region and allow the people in Bahrain to talk with each other and reach a peaceful solution to end the current crisis by ending military deployment in the country," Qassemi said.

Arab foreign ministers who met in Cairo Sunday delivered a tirade of criticism against Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance group, claiming that Tehran was destabilizing the region.

They said they planned to "brief" the UN Security Council on Iran's destabilizing policies in the region, particularly its support for what they called as Shiite rebels in Yemen, with a view to submit at a later stage an anti-Iran Arab resolution.

The ministers said Arab telecommunications satellites would ban Iranian-financed television stations for what they claimed was their fomenting of sectarian and ethnic tensions and because they posed a threat to Arab security. It gave no details.

"We are not declaring war on Iran at this stage," Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said. "We have not taken a decision to ask the Security Council to meet, but we are just briefing the council and maybe the next stage would be for us to meet and call for a Security Council meeting and submit a draft Arab resolution (against Iran)."

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