Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei received Slovenian President Borut Pahor Tuesday evening to discuss the developments in the region as well as bilateral ties. Mr. Pahor heads a delegation of politicians and entrepreneurs to Tehran and had signed a number of MoUs with President Rouhani earlier in the morning.
Leader believed that Iran had been in the forefront of fighting against terrorism and a pioneer which actively engaged in the developments in the region and urged others to follow the suit in more actively responding to foreign pressures to avoid being passive onlookers; “violence, turmoil, political instability, and petty terrorist extremists are the outcome of foreign intervention in the domestic affairs of the Middle Eastern countries and the imposition upon nations of the region; all should contribute to extinguish the fire of conflict; the Islamic Republic of Iran has been influential contrary to the propaganda and boisterous media hype of the coalition which virtually failed to achieve anything considerable in fighting ISIL,” he told the meeting.
Ayatollah Khamenei attributed the failure to two overriding theories; “the one posits that the US would not defeat the ISIL since it needed the group to have the group present in the region to achieve their political interests, just as the British had done in India in keeping the pot boiling in Kashmir in colonial times,” the Leader said. “The second theory however assumes that the US would actually want to defeat the extremists, but the means and the policies have so far failed to be effective; whatever the means to deal with the problem, the outcome has been paltry, with the region going down in the mire of violence and instability.”
On the issue of refugees, Ayatollah Khamenei said that the EU countries had failed to house a few thousand refugees of the Middle East, while Iran had been hosting in humanitarian and acceptable terms about 3 million Afghan refugees since 3 decades ago; on Yemen, he criticized the current state, believing that Saudi Arabia and its petty coalition had been the culprit in contributing to the plights of Yemenis by devastation of the country’s infrastructure during past 20 months; “this is a real suffering for all humanity and a nation which is pushed upon the extremes, would be helped by others to defend their lands as well as people.
Leader also criticized the parties to P5+1 in failing to remain committed to obligations, while Iran had been committed in implementing fully the nuclear deal.
Mr. Pahor of Slovenia, accompanied by President Rouhani to the meeting, hailed Iran as a pivot of stability in the region, a country he believed was laudable in its contribution and its epic feat in hitting a deal with world powers to solve a nuclear stalemate; “Slovenia and Iran have ample grounds to cooperate to provide both sides with interests; with our embassy opened in Tehran, we look forward to seeing improved relations with Tehran as one of our good friends,” he concluded the meeting.
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