Regional States Hail Iran’s Handling of Riots

Date: 03 January 2018 - 22:18

News ID: ۴۸۴۶۸

MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- Russia has hit out at the U.S. over its stance on riots in Iran—comparing the Iranian response to the demonstrations with the American authorities’ reaction to Occupy Wall Street and the Ferguson riots.

The Russian government issued its rebuke after Washington’s top envoy to the U.N. praised the demonstrations as a cry "for freedom” and vowed to raise the issue at the Security Council.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on countries to "not be silent” and encourage the rioters in Iran, leading to an angry reaction in Moscow.
"There is no doubt that the U.S. delegation (to the UN) has something to tell the world,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook.
"For example, Nikki Haley can share America’s experience in breaking up protests, going into detail about how, say, the mass arrests and the stifling of the Occupy Wall Street movement happened or how Ferguson was ‘quelled,’” she added.
The Ferguson riots erupted in Missouri after the police shooting of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown in 2014, while the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests took aim at income inequality. Both U.S. protests were among the most serious in recent history, leading to clashes with police and arrests.
"Haley, once involved in ‘peace and security’ in Syria, is now concerned about the ‘peace, security and freedom’ in Iran,” Russian Senator Alexey Pushkov, a frequent anti-Western firebrand, wrote on Twitter. "In other words—about regime change.”
Turkey said on Wednesday Iran’s response to days of riots was appropriate and that Ankara valued Iranian stability, in one of the regional expressions of support for Tehran.
A source in Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's office said he discussed the unrest in Iran during a telephone call with President Hassan Rouhani.
Erdogan's sympathetic comments follow an improvement in relations between Ankara and Tehran, which have worked together in recent months to reduce violence in Syria, despite backing opposing sides in the conflict for several years.
Turkey's ties with Iran expanded last year as Ankara's relations with the United States, the occupying regime of Israel and Saudi Arabia all frayed.
Turkey shares a border with Iran. They are the two biggest non-Arab powers in the Middle East region.
In August Iran's military chief of staff visited Turkey, which is a member of the NATO military alliance, for talks on cooperation in the Syrian conflict and counter-terrorism.
"Iran's stability is important for us. We are against foreign interventions in Iran," Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, in remarks quoted by television channel NTV.
Broadcaster CNN Turk said Cavusoglu also echoed Rouhani's suggestion that the United States and the Zionist regime had provoked unrest.
"There are two people supporting the demonstrations in Iran: (Israeli PM Benjamin) Netanyahu and (U.S. President Donald) Trump," it quoted Cavusoglu as saying.