Following U.S. Fiasco at UN Security Council:
Saudis Call for Extension of Iran Arms Ban
DUBAI (Dispatches) -- Saudi Arabia’s UN ambassador has called for an extension of the arms embargo on Iran in a session on Thursday, Saudi press agency reported.
During a conference held in Geneva Wednesday, Abdul Aziz al-Wasel accused Iran of shipping weapons to "militias which destabilize regional peace”.
The arms embargo on Iran is due to expire on October 18, but the U.S. has been pressuring the UN to extend it.
Saudi Arabia’s desperate call comes after the United States just lost the showdown at the United Nations Security Council over extending the terms of the arms embargo against Iran.
The U.S. government was left embarrassingly isolated, winning just one other vote for its proposed resolution (from the Dominican Republic), while Russia and China voted against and 11 other nations abstained, American magazine Foreign Policy wrote on Tuesday.
Taking a leaf out of Washington’s book, al-Wasel claimed that allowing the Islamic Republic to buy weapons will increase their hostile activities in the region.
Lifting the international ban on Iran, he noted, will lead to more "destruction and devastation” and create conflicts in the region.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest arms buyer in the world, mainly importing from the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an arms deal worth $110 billion with Saudi Arabia in May 2017 on his first foreign trip since becoming president.
The kingdom is using the weapons in its ongoing war on Yemen, which includes starvation of the Arab world’s most impoverished nation. The war has killed more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians, and destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure.
Arab states in the Persian Gulf are among the biggest arms spenders in the world. Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest weapons importer in 2015–19, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). During a conference held in Geneva Wednesday, Abdul Aziz al-Wasel accused Iran of shipping weapons to "militias which destabilize regional peace”.
The arms embargo on Iran is due to expire on October 18, but the U.S. has been pressuring the UN to extend it.
Saudi Arabia’s desperate call comes after the United States just lost the showdown at the United Nations Security Council over extending the terms of the arms embargo against Iran.
The U.S. government was left embarrassingly isolated, winning just one other vote for its proposed resolution (from the Dominican Republic), while Russia and China voted against and 11 other nations abstained, American magazine Foreign Policy wrote on Tuesday.
Taking a leaf out of Washington’s book, al-Wasel claimed that allowing the Islamic Republic to buy weapons will increase their hostile activities in the region.
Lifting the international ban on Iran, he noted, will lead to more "destruction and devastation” and create conflicts in the region.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest arms buyer in the world, mainly importing from the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an arms deal worth $110 billion with Saudi Arabia in May 2017 on his first foreign trip since becoming president.
The kingdom is using the weapons in its ongoing war on Yemen, which includes starvation of the Arab world’s most impoverished nation. The war has killed more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians, and destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure.
Saudi Arabia has already proven itself as one of the biggest threats to the world with its support of terrorism and extremism – being the birthplace to Salafist and Takfiri ideologies which have inspired such violent groups as Al-Qaeda and Daesh.
Iran is known for supporting groups which have been fighting Daesh and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria as well as the occupying regime of Israel in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories.