News / Politics

US, UK cannot hold regional security hostage for Netanyahu’s sake: Iran FM

Thursday, 18 January 2024 11:09 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 18 January 2024 11:20 AM ]

A combo image of Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (R) and his British counterpart David Cameron (via the Iranian Foreign Ministry)

The United States and Britain cannot hold the security of the region hostage for the benefit of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says Iran’s foreign minister.

In a post on his X account on Thursday, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said he discussed bilateral and regional issues with his British counterpart, David Cameron, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.

“I asserted that the US and the UK must immediately stop supporting the war crimes of the apartheid Zionist regime against the Palestinians,” he wrote.

“They do not have the right to hold the security of the region hostage for the benefit of Netanyahu,” the Iranian foreign minister added.

Cameron said earlier via X that he had told Amir-Abdollahian that Iran must use its influence to stop the attacks of Yemen's Ansarullah resistance movement in the Red Sea.

Since the start of the Israeli military aggression on Gaza in early October 2023, the United States and its Western allies have been providing financial and logistical support to the occupying regime in its ceaseless bombardment campaign against Palestinians in the besieged territory.

As part of their support for Palestinians, the Yemeni armed forces, run by Ansarullah, have in recent weeks targeted several ships owned by Israel or bound for ports in the occupied territories in the strategic Red Sea after multiple warnings.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed Western allegations about the Islamic Republic’s involvement in Ansarullah’s attacks in the Red Sea, saying that raising the issue is meant to divert public attention from the complicity of Western countries, led by the United States, in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“The United States cannot deny or cover up the incontestable reality that recent incidents in the Red Sea are directly related to Israel’s continued atrocities against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” wrote Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations, in letters to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and rotating President of the UN Security Council Nicolas de Rivière on Monday.

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