Iran raps Arab states' shameless acknowledgement of Israel ties

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has blasted certain regional and Muslim countries for setting aside their shame and disclosing their relations with the occupying regime of Israel.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 31 International Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran on Tuesday, Rouhani said some regional states and Muslim countries shamelessly confirm their close ties with Israel, describing it as a “bitter” development facing the Islamic world today.

“In the past, if some countries covertly held talks and cooperated with the enemies of the region, they would deny it,” Rouhani said. “Such relations were so ominous and detestable that no head of state could count Israel as a friend and the resistance [front] as an enemy to the region.” 

In recent months, numerous reports have emerged suggesting growing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The two sides have no diplomatic relations but are known to be in secret contact.

Elsewhere in his address, the Iranian chief executive highlighted the latest gains made by the Syrian and Iraqi armies on the battlefield against terrorists.

He said that the 2016 Islamic Unity Conference coincided with the liberation of the Syrian city of Aleppo, and similarly this year’s event comes on the heels of the end of Daesh’s territorial rule in Iraq and Syria.

He also referred to conspiracies hatched by the global arrogance and Zionism in the region, stressing that it is clear that big powers, including the US and Israel created terrorist groups and pitted regional people against each other.

“Regional nations with different ethnicities and religions, extending from the Indian subcontinent  to the Western Asia had been living peacefully without any rifts for centuries, but it was you who sowed the seeds of discord among people in the 20th and 21th century,” Rouhani said.

He further noted that Washington and Tel Aviv stoked divisions between Shia and Sunni Muslims as well as other ethnicities in the region.

The Iranian president also predicted that Syria would sooner or later be purged of terrorists and that the Iraqi nation would stand more united in the future.

He also pointed to the developments in Yemen, which has been under incessant Saudi attacks since 2015 and expressed hope that the nation would eventually emerge victorious and get rid of the enemies.

“The people of Yemen will definitely make the aggressors regret" their actions, Rouhani pointed out.

Saudi Arabia and a group of its vassal states have been waging a deadly war on Yemen since March 2015, attempting unsuccessfully to reinstall a former allied regime.

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