Top Advisor to Leader:

Post-U.S. Era Has Started in Persian Gulf

Date: 12 March 2023 - 21:28

News ID: ۱۱۳۳۰۲

TEHRAN -- A top military adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Sunday a post-U.S. era has started in the Persian Gulf region in the wake of a China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic ties.
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh marks an end to the American hegemony in the region.
“Regarding the recent agreement, it … was a tectonic shift in the political field and an end to the American hegemony in the region. The post-U.S. era in the Persian Gulf region has just started,” he said.
“The Chinese have decided to become the world’s first economy by 2030. The deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, mediated by China, dealt the second biggest blow to the U.S. by China. That is because Saudi Arabia is China’s largest supplier of oil, and on the other hand, China’s strategic partnership agreement with Iran to invest in the development of our infrastructure was a great agreement.”
General Rahim Safavi, who is also a former chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), expressed hope that the region will move towards sustainable security and peace through the Iran-Saudi détente, noting that the power of the U.S. and the Zionists is on the sharp decline.
“In my opinion, the agreement is in the interests of the two countries and the Western Asia region. It is not against any regional countries. Of course, it is natural for the arrogant powers to be upset about this issue and sabotage it,” he said.
The Associated Press said the agreement dealt a heavy blow to ionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had sought a fearmongering campaign against Tehran’s nuclear program and the

Islamic Republic’s clout in West Asia.

The American news agency called the deal a “breakthrough” which exposed the occupying regime’s divisions.

The agreement is one of the most “striking shifts” in Middle Eastern diplomacy over recent years and stirred “cautious optimism” in the region, it said.

The agreement has caused “disappointment” and “finger-pointing” in Israeli political circles, the report said.

The AP said while Netanyahu had made foreign policy boasts about the so-called “normalization deals” with United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan in 2020, and advertised them as part of a wider push to stand up against Iran’s influence in the region, Saudi Arabia’s decision to engage with Iran has “thrown cold water on those ambitions.”

The agreement rapprochement has left the occupying regime of Israel “largely alone” in its futile attempts for diplomatic isolation of Iran and threats of a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it added.

Yoel Guzansky, an expert on the Persian Gulf at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, said that the restoration of ties between Iran and Suadi Arabia is “a blow to Israel’s notion and efforts in recent years to try to form an anti-Iran bloc in the region.”

“If you see the Middle East as a zero-sum game, a diplomatic win for Iran is very bad news for Israel,” he added.

Danny Danon, a Netanyahu ally and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations who recently predicted a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2023, said the agreement with Iran “is not supporting our efforts”.

Former prime minister Yair Lapid said the agreement marked “a full and dangerous failure of Israel’s foreign policy.”

Opposition lawmaker Gideon Saar mocked Netanyahu’s goal of formal ties with the kingdom. “Netanyahu promised peace with Saudi Arabia,” he wrote on social media. “In the end (Saudi Arabia) did it … with Iran.”