President Raeisi: Biden’s Middle East tour will not bring security for Israeli regime

Iran says US President Joe Biden's visit to the Middle East, starting Wednesday, during which he is expected to follow up on Washington’s agenda of enabling normalization between Arab states and Israel, will not bring security for the occupying regime.

Addressing a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, President Ebrahim Raeisi said if the visits by American officials to the region are intended to reinforce the Zionist regime’s position and provide impetus to the normalization process, the efforts are bound to fail. 

“If the shuttling trips by the American officials to the regional countries are meant to reinforce the Zionist regime’s position and normalize the regime’s relations with some [regional] countries, [they (the Americans) should know that] their efforts will not create security for the Zionists in any way,” he said.

Biden arrived in the Israeli-occupied territories on Wednesday, kicking off his much-anticipated four-day trip to the region, his first as the US president.

The regional tour will also take Biden to Saudi Arabia, the country he once pledged to make a "pariah".

Since 2020, the US has brokered normalization agreements under the so-called Abraham Accords between the Israeli regime and regional countries including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

Palestinians and their supporters have denounced it as a “stab in the back” of the Palestinian cause of liberation from the Israeli occupation and aggression.

Observers believe the agreements would not have been possible without the approval of Saudi Arabia, which has maintained secret ties with Tel Aviv.

In 2020, Israel’s then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Riyadh, meeting with Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman. The kingdom also opened its skies to Israeli flights in a controversial move.

“If you want to know what effect your performance and shuttling trips have had in the region, watch with open eyes the position of the [regional] peoples, and the growing resentment of the Zionists and the [Israeli] regime’s atrocities in their hearts," Iran's president said, addressing Americans.

He also warned that the Islamic Republic keeps a close watch on the regional developments.

“We have told this to those who have brought us messages on behalf of the Americans on repeated occasions that [even] the slightest move against Iran’s territorial integrity will be met with our decisive reaction,” Raeisi asserted.

‘Language of coercion doesn’t work on Iran’

President Raeisi also addressed the issue of ongoing negotiations aimed at the removal of anti-Iran sanctions and the potential revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 agreement between Tehran and world powers.

He reiterated that the country would not row back from its rightful and logical stance, advising Americans to pay attention to realities on the ground and learn a “salutary lesson” instead of continuing the defeated policy of “maximum pressure.”

The US left the deal in 2018 and reinstated sanctions under the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign. Washington’s allies in the deal—the UK, France, and Germany—buckled under the American pressure and refused to fulfill their share of commitments under the deal.

The Islamic Republic has asserted, on numerous occasions, that it would return to its full compliance, once the US removes all the sanctions and provides guarantees that it would not quit the agreement again.

“The Americans say Iran has to return to the JCPOA, while the Islamic Republic has never left the JCPOA. It is the Americans, who have violated their commitments,” Raeisi said.

The Americans, he said, must have learned this over the 43 years that have passed since the 1979 victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, that “the Iranian people cannot be addressed with the language of coercion.”

“It is strange that they (the US) are still trying to use the same discourse, which will definitely fail to bring along any results for them.”

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