Tehran Tells Riyadh to Change Course

Date: 04 December 2020 - 21:12

News ID: ۸۵۰۸۹

TEHRAN (Dispatches) – Iran said on Thursday Saudi Arabia has to revisit its decades-old policy of fueling tensions in the region.
In a tweet, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh reminded that "for decades, Wahabism—nurtured by colonial powers—has been the source of bigotry, hatred & terrorism in our region — and beyond.”
"Fact: Every terrorist group in our region has graduated from Saudi-funded Madrassas. No amount of Saudi obfuscation can hide this ugly reality,” he added.
He was referring to the official Saudi ideology that is marked by antipathy towards the people subscribing to other schools of thought, moderate mindsets, and established Abrahamic religious practices.
The ideology has been motivating Takfiri terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh that consider people, who are unlike themselves, to be worthy of death. The groups have slain thousands throughout the region, especially in Iraq and Syria, and elsewhere over the past decades.
Earlier in the year, the Afghan Embassy in Riyadh announced that the kingdom was about to build 600 such institutes in Afghanistan that is already grappling with Taliban insurgency.
Khatibzadeh also said Saudi atrocities in Yemen and the kingdom’s infamous slaughtering of leading journalist Jamal Khashoggi "are just some of their other stunts.”
"The latest: standing alongside the leading state-sponsor of terrorism against Palestinians,” the spokesman said, apparently referring to reports of extensive courtship between Saudi Arabia and the occupying regime of Israel.
"Saudis must change course. The policy of inflaming tension is no longer tenable,” he said.
Saudi Arabia has welcomed a flurry of normalization deals between the Zionist regime and some Arab states. Riyadh is believed to be next in line to normalize ties with Tel Aviv after an unprecedented secret visit recently by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the kingdom.
Palestinians have denounced the push as a stab in their back.
Khatibzadeh’s remarks came in response to former Saudi foreign minister and current Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir’s insulting comments about Iran’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif.
Zarif had earlier blamed the kingdom, the U.S., and the occupying regime of Israel for the Friday assassination near Tehran of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior Iranian nuclear scientist.
He had cited Netanyahu’s visit to Riyadh, trilateral meetings involving him, Saudi officials, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- who was visiting the Saudi capital during a frenzied tour of the region -- and Iranophobic remarks by the Israeli premier.

The surprisingly coincidental developments, Zarif had said, "unfortunately crystalized in the form of the cowardly terrorist act and martyrdom of one of the country’s senior directors.”
The foreign minister had also shown how the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh had been followed by a misinformation campaign on Twitter featuring countless fake accounts and tweets attacking Iran, something for which he still blamed the trio.
Jubeir reacted by deflecting the blame for the assassination, claiming that targeted killings did not form a constituent of the Saudi policy, and tauntingly accused Zarif of "desperation.”