The United States is pointing the finger of blame at Iran to cover up its pattern of blunders that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East, according to Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo. “The failures, or lack of policies, of the US, which violate international law, have left the Middle East in total chaos,” he said in remarks published in the Truthdig website on June 10.
“The United States, to cover up these aggressive, reckless and costly policies, blames Iran. Iran is blamed for US failures in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon,” he said, according to the article entitled “Scapegoating Iran”. The envoy believes that the administration of President Donald Trump is very “naive” about the Middle East and Iran.
“It can only speak in the language of threats—pressure, sanctions, intervention. These policies have failed in the region. They are very risky and costly. Let the Americans deal with the problems of the countries they have already invaded and attacked.
America lacks constructive power in the Middle East. It is unable to govern even a village in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Syria. All it can do is use force and destructive power. This US administration wants the Middle East and the whole world to bow to it. This is not a policy conducive to sound relationships with sovereign states, especially those countries that have resisted American influence.”
On the situation in war-torn Syria, Khoshroo said the plan to arm “moderate” rebels was a cover to topple the embattled President Bashar al-Assad. “The Americans knew there were no ‘moderate’ rebels,” he stated, adding that they knew those weapons would fall into the hands of terrorist groups like the self-styled Islamic State.
“Once again American policy failed. The Americans succeeded in destroying a country. They succeeded in creating bloodbaths. They succeeded in displacing millions of people,” the diplomat was quoted as saying in the opinion piece written by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author and former professor at Princeton University.
Nuclear Deal
Khoshroo criticized Trump’s unilateral and controversial decision to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal. “He called this deal a source of embarrassment for America…To walk away from an international agreement and then threaten a sovereign country is the real source of embarrassment since Iran was in full compliance, while the US never was.”
The US is concerned about Iranian influence in the region and seeks to contain it, he said, adding that Israel is portraying Iran as the main threat to peace in the Middle East to divert attention from its crimes against the defenseless Palestinians. “Of course, blaming and threatening Iran is not new,” the ambassador said. “This has been going on for 40 years. The Iranian people and the Iranian government are accustomed to this nonsense. US intervention in the internal affairs of Iran goes back a long time.”
Israeli Lawlessness
Iran’s envoy to the world body noted that insecurity and instability in the region have been worsened by foreign intervention as well as Israel’s systemic lawlessness. The issue of Palestine is at the heart of turmoil in the Middle East for Muslims, he said, adding that any delay in finding solutions to such wounds in the Middle East exposes the region to more danger and threats.
“Americans say they want the Middle East to be free from violent extremism, but this will only happen when the Middle East is free from occupation and foreign intervention. Americans are selling weapons across the Middle East. They focus on how much money they can earn from destruction. They don’t care about human life. They don’t care about security or democratic process or political process. This indeed is cause for concern.”
