Raeisi: Tehran-Riyadh detente to change regional landscape
Iranian president said Iran and Saudi Arabia are two great countries in the region and their recent rapprochement will change the region’s equations.
In an interview with Syria’s state news agency, SANA, Ebrahim Raeisi said that Iran does not believe that Saudi Arabia is its enemy, or the Islamic Republic is the enemy of Saudi Arabia.
Raeisi stressed that at the height of tensions between Tehran and Riyadh, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution emphasized that Iran’s main enemy is the United States and Israel, not Saudi Arabia.
On March 10, after several days of intensive negotiations hosted by China, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to resume their diplomatic relations and reopen their embassies and diplomatic missions after seven years of estrangement.
Restoration of relations between the two countries have affected relations between many countries in the Middle East region and have reduced tensions in the region.
The Iranian president added that many regional countries have now woken up to the realities in the region.
President Raeisi said that Islamic Republic has managed to confront the Iranophobia policy adopted by the U.S. and Israel, and expose their lies about Iran.
The policy, which has been the source of many tensions in the Middle East, was aimed at creating terror in the
region.
Raeisi also pointed to the presence of forces of some regional countries inside the Syrian territory. He said that Turkey has said that its presence in Syria is aimed at fighting militants who threaten its security. However, the Iranian president said that the only way to restore security in the region is to give control of those areas to Syria and preserve the Arab country’s territorial integrity.
Raeisi said that Tehran understands the concerns of Syria’s neighbors, but the solution is to return these territories to Syrian sovereignty.
Turkey has deployed forces in Syria in violation of the Arab country’s territorial integrity in recent years.
Ankara-backed militants were deployed to northeastern Syria in October 2019 after Turkish military forces launched a long-threatened cross-border invasion in a declared attempt to push militants of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) away from border
areas.