Iran Proposes Building Persian Gulf Alliances

Date: 19 February 2017 - 20:19

News ID: ۳۶۹۵۲

MUNICH (Dispatches) -- Iran’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif on Sunday mocked being "put on notice” in a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump and said his country is focused on building Persian Gulf alliances.
Zarif prompted laughter from a crowd of trans-Atlantic military and political officials at a global security conference here by observing that "tweet is now very fashionable’’ before answering whether his country was concerned about the possibility of more U.S. sanctions.
"We don’t respond well to threats, we don’t respond well to coercion and we don’t respond well to sanctions but we respond very well to mutual respect. We respond very well to arrangements to reach mutually acceptable scenarios,” Zarif told the conference.
"Iran is unmoved by threats,” he said. "Everybody tested us for many years — all threats and coercions were imposed on us,” Zarif added.
He mocked "the concept of crippling sanctions,” which he said didn’t stop Iran acquiring thousands more centrifuges, used for enriching uranium, before talks with the U.S. on the nuclear agreement got underway.
"Crippling sanctions produced a net total of 19,800 centrifuges.”
Iran has always said it has no interest in nuclear weapons. Asked how long it would take to make one if it did decide it wanted such weapons, Zarif replied: "We are not going to produce nuclear weapons, period. So it will take forever for Iran to produce nuclear weapons.”
The U.S. and other Persian Gulf countries concerned with Iran’s foreign policy have "misplaced anxieties,” Zarif said. He said his country is ready to lead regional security talks among "Islamic brothers” and that President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to Oman last week was a step in that direction.
"Countries in the Persian Gulf region need to surmount the current state of division and tension and instead move in the direction of erecting realistic regional arrangements. It can perhaps start with a modest regional dialog forum,” he said.
Zarif urged Arab states to work with Iran to address "anxieties" and violence across the region.
"On regional dialogue, I'm modest and I'm focusing on the Persian Gulf. We have enough problems in this region so we want to start a dialogue with countries we call brothers in Islam," he said.
"We need to address common problems and perceptions that have given rise to anxieties and the level of violence in the region," he added, when asked whether Tehran would also consider a region-wide dialog.
Zarif earlier criticized four-decades of well financed "Takfiri" ideology which has its roots in Saudi Arabia and is followed by extremist groups such as Daesh, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra Front.
Saudi Arabia unilaterally severed ties with Iran last January after protesters in Tehran and Mashhad attacked its diplomatic premises following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Some of Riyadh's allies followed suit and cut or downgraded their ties with Iran.
It was choosing regional enmity, Zarif said, that had in part spawned such extremist outfits such as Daesh and Al-Nusra Front.
"For nearly four decades, a well-financed global proliferation of Takfiri ideology based on division, hatred and rejection, which everybody would agree has nothing to do with Islam, has been sold as promoting a so-called ‘moderate Islam’ to confront an erroneously-framed ‘radical Iran,” he noted.
The other contributors to the rise of such groups were "the endemic problem of foreign occupation and invasion,” and their arming and financing by some states in the region, Zarif added.
Addressing other crises in the Middle East, the top Iranian diplomat said conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain "do not have military solutions," adding "each requires a political solution, where no genuine actor is excluded.”