Iran FM: Policy of Iran’s exclusion from regional plans hit dead end
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the trans-regional powers’ policy of excluding Iran from regional arrangements has failed to achieve its goals.
Addressing the 8th Conference on the History of Iranian Foreign Relations on Tuesday, the top Iranian diplomat said that despite Tehran’s principled policies, some trans-regional powers have made every effort to turn the Persian Gulf into a center of crisis and conflict in order to secure their “illegitimate interests.”
Araghchi added that certain powers have been trying for decades to keep the Persian Gulf in a state of “permanent tension” by militarizing the region and selling billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and preventing cooperation between the regional nations.
However, he said that not only their policy of excluding Iran from regional arrangements and sowing discord between Iran and its neighbors in the Persian Gulf has failed but also with Iran’s active diplomacy as well as the changes made in some regional countries, the Persian Gulf is entering a new era of cooperation.
He cited the full-scale economic war launched against Iran through imposing illegal sanctions as one of the efforts by the trans-regional powers to sideline Iran from the regional arrangements.
Iran has always said that the Persian Gulf countries are able to ensure their security and there is no need to the military presence of extra-regional states. In recent years, relations between the Persian Gulf countries have seen a continuously positive trend and that Iran has been trying to expand its economic and security cooperation with the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region.