Iranian Foreign Minister Mocks Trump's Saudi Arabia Speech
After President Trump delivered his speech in Saudi Arabia, Sunday, which was carefully bereft of words like “radical Islamic terrorism”,” instead using more moderate terms like “Islamic terrorism,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Trump of deliberately “milking” the Arabs for sealing an arms deal with the United States and other future investments.
In the same speech where Trump urged the Gulf nations to unite and fight against “terrorist and extremists,” he isolated out Iran for fuelling “the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.” He further added that it was Iran’s regime that trained militants to “spread destruction and chaos.”
“It [Iran’s] is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room,” said Trump in his speech, Financial Times reported.
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Iran and Saudi Arabia have shared a relationship based on allegations, conflicts and religious competitiveness. Hence, when Trump called Iran a Muslim nation which harbors terrorists and Islamic extremists, it did not go down well with the Iranian government, which re-elected its incumbent president earlier this week.
“Just when Iranians voted overwhelmingly for openness and engagement with the world, Trump clenched his fist and responded by calling for Iran’s isolation,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is yet to comment on Trump’s remarks. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, however, agreed with Trump’s views on Iran, calling the nation a mutual enemy and a source of terrorism that they are required to fight against, Reuters reported.
Zarif further insinuated that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were carried out by the Saudi Arabia and hence, advised Trump to work out a deal with Riyadh to prevent such an attack from happening in the future, Reuters reported. "[Trump] must enter into dialogue with them about ways to prevent terrorists and takfiris from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the Sept. 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries," Zarif wrote for the website of the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news network, as Reuters reported.
Even though most of the 19 hijackers who brought about the attack were Arabs, Saudi Arabia has maintained that their people did not have any role to play in the historically infamous attacks.
Incidentally, Trump too had mentioned during his campaigning days that he thought that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks.
"You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center because they have papers out there that are very secret. You may find it's the Saudis, okay, but you will find out,” he had said in a speech back in February 2016.
However, after he was sworn in as the president, he refrained from using harsh discourse against the Arabs, even choosing to exclude Saudi Arabia from the list of Muslim countries against which Trump’s administration had planned to implement a travel ban.
During the president’s recent visit, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia sealed deals of between $280 billion and $380 billion, including an arms deal, which is valued at $110 billion.
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