TEHRAN -- President Ebrahim Raisi has hailed ongoing rapprochement aimed at restoring relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which agreed to resume their diplomatic relations under China’s auspices back in March.
The countries, Raisi said, enjoy influential regional positions and their relations stand to benefit the region.
“Our enemies, including the Zionist regime, are outraged by restoration of these relations since they are trying to sow division among us,” told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television in an interview.
Raisi said the reconciliation process between the two sides took off the ground after Beijing informed Tehran about Riyadh’s inclination towards the détente.
Raisi expressed support on the part of the Islamic Republic for Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, asserting that U.S. forces have to leave Syrian soil “immediately.”
Iran, he added, is prepared to cooperate with Syria in the efforts that were aimed at the country’s reconstruction.
Raeisi went on to reiterate the Islamic Republic’s opposition to the United States’ unilateralism.
“We believe that the world is not limited to three or four countries, which consider themselves to be rulers of the world.”
Iran, he added, had managed to call the Americans’ bluff on fighting terrorism in order for the world to realize that “it is the Americans, themselves, who manage terrorism.”
Raisi pointed to the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top anti-terror commander, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, by the U.S. saying the atrocity, unlike what Washington had hoped for, failed to end his legacy, noting how the commander’s saga had turned into a model for the youths of the resistance across the region.
The president further said the Zionist regime’s first potential act of aggression against Iran would also be its last such mistake since the regime would not be capable of surviving the Islamic Republic’s counterstrike.
“The Zionist regime’s threats amount to futile rhetoric, which no one in the world believes in. If the Zionist enemy took the slightest of actions against us, our first action would equal its destruction,” he said.
“The Islamic Republic’s power is not a secret to anyone in the region. The Zionist regime’s first act of folly would also be its last,” Raisi asserted.
“The Zionist regime would not be able to survive the initial moments of Iran’s response,” he noted, saying the Zionist regime, itself, knows well that it is incapable of confronting the Islamic Republic.
Iran, the president said, has reached the stage of self-sufficiency in the military sphere, describing the Islamic Republic as a