US blanket support for Saudi Arabia, Israel enabled them to carry out atrocities: Zarif
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tells CBS News that the United States’ choices are to blame for the Middle East’s disasters.
"The United States' choices in the Middle East are wrong, and these wrong choices lead to the disaster in our region," Zarif told the American network on Sunday.
"We knew that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong choice, although Saddam Hussein was our enemy. We knew that the attack against Afghanistan was the wrong choice although Taliban were our enemy,” he added.
“We know that the invasion and attack, bombardment of Yemen are wrong choices,” Zarif noted, referring to Washington’s support for the 2015-present Saudi Arabia-led war on the Arab world’s poorest nation.
“But the United States is continuously and persistently on the wrong side," the Iranian top diplomat asserted.
Zarif said US had emboldened Saudi Arabia and Israel to stage their atrocities by providing the regimes with “blanket support.”
"I think the blanket support that the US provides to Saudi Arabia and to Israel has enabled them to carry out atrocities that would not have happened, had there not existed this blanket support," he said.
The remarks came as the kingdom has come under mounting criticism for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post columnist and notable critic of Riyadh’s policies, who was murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said recently that the kingdom would not have proceeded with the killing had it not been in receipt of US support.
Washington is separately under pressure from high-profile rights groups to axe its arms sales to the kingdom and logistical support for the war on Yemen, which has killed thousands since its onset.
The US is also Israel’s oldest and strongest ally, which has almost invariably blocked efforts at the United Nations to hold the regime responsible for its excesses across Tel Aviv-occupied Palestinian territories.
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