(ANTIMEDIA) While Donald Trump was in Riyadh, raving incessantly about the over-hyped Iran threat, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif was trolling America’s foreign policy establishment. He advised Trump to discuss with Saudi Arabia how to avoid another 9/11 atrocity rather than making baseless claims against Iran.
Zarif said:
“[Trump] must enter into dialogue with them [the Saudis] about ways to prevent terrorists from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the September 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries.”
He added:
“You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Centre because they have papers out there that are very secret. You will find it’s the Saudis, you will find that is the case.”
As the Independent has noted:
“Most of the 19 terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 people in New York in 2001 were Saudi citizens and there have [sic] repeated accusations that members of the Saudi hierarchy were complicit in the attack.” [emphasis added]
Foreign Policy, among many other mainstream outlets, has documented many instances of reported Saudi government officials’ role in the 2001 terror attack — and even President Trump has promulgated these claims.
As Anti-Media has pointed out multiple times, the U.S. government cannot claim the moral high ground in combatting terrorism while signing multi-billion dollar arms deals with the birthplace of radical Islam (not to mention, one of ISIS’ core sponsors). In this context, the Iranian foreign minister’s advice to Donald Trump is actually quite honest.
However, what was really stunning about the Iranian reaction to Trump’s sword-dancing visit to Saudi Arabia was its outright warning to the Saudi Kingdom.
Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leading member of the Iranian parliament’s Expediency Council, claimed these multi-billion dollar arms sales may ultimately backfire on the Saudi regime. Rafsanjani warned that one day, the Saudis may end up turning these weapons against the Saudi royal family.
“We have seen it all before. The Saudis are spending billions on arms which they don’t have the capacity to absorb. At the same time they are facing rebellion at home they are trying to hide and a costly war in Yemen,” Rafsanjani said, according to the Independent.
Drawing a parallel with recent Iranian history, during which the U.S. was very friendly with the Middle Eastern nation while it was under the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, a brutal, U.S.-installed dictator, Rasfanjani stated the following:
“The Shah, too, spent billions of dollars buying arms from America, he too had capacity problems. We had 65,000 Americans in Iran, most of them in the armed forces. But then came the revolution and the weapons were used against him and his regime.
“We watch what is going on in Saudi Arabia and I think the fate of the Saudi royal family will be the same as that of [the Shah’s dynasty] the Pahlavis. There is less and less space in the world for absolute monarchies like the Saudis”. [emphasis added]
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