Ali Shamkhani told Al-Alam TV Network on Wednesday that Saudi money had been playing an effective role in Syria. He criticized the kingdom’s sabotage act inside Iran giving example of shooting of government officials in Dezfoul, Khuzestan province earlier in October.
“The shooter turned out to be a mercenary of Saudi government; now Saudi Rial determine the outcome of war in Syria. In Yemen, Saudis strike and kill innocent citizens, and it had waged an orchestrated attempt to mobilize the Arab nations against Iran, which we believe is quite unnecessary, since we had historically good relations with the Arab world. We recommend Saudis to think twice about their actions and if they change the behavior, a détente will be possible,” he detailed.
On a question about the US and its allies view of the Assad’s future place in Syria, and whether Iran and Russia had disagreement about the issue, Shamkhani said that western perennial attempt to topple Assad proved a failure; “we believe that only Syrians through ballot boxes decide the fate of Assad; what the west lost in military terms now is attempted in political arena; Moscow and Tehran are in harmony with their positions on Syria. What has been changed is western position, which has been pliant about Assad,” he told Al-Alam.
“They once had not imagine a Syria with Assad. Now however, they have found that there is no other option than the very fact they dreaded much, thus they have to make even more concessions,” Shamkhani added.
On the rising number of Iranian martyrs in Syria, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council believed that in Syria the problem was not of the number of troops; “Iran had not welcomed sending troops to Syria, since Syrian government forces suffice to fight terrorists,” he argued.
On possible meetings between Iran and Persian Gulf Arab states to address the issues, Shamkhani said that Iran believed that it had good relations with much of these Arab states, even with Arab countries in North Africa; “a major issue of the Arab world is the Palestinian issue; in this, we are in common grounds with the Arab states, since we have given blood in upholding the Palestinian question; the Iran-Arab problem is more of an imagined entity, lacking concrete form,” Shamkhani told the TV program, “however, we have issues with some Arab countries since they had been vassal states of foreign powers with which we had some difficulties; I hope we address and tackle some misconceptions on our relations with Arab world through restoring the status quo ante,” he emphasized.
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