Ties With UAE in “Unacceptable” Lane

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

TEHRAN – Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says ties with the UAE have drifted into an “unacceptable” lane due to the strategic mistakes the tiny Arab country’s leaders have made over the past years.

“The UAE government, despite maintaining vast economic ties with Iran, has entered an unacceptable confrontational phase in its relations with the Islamic Republic due to the political and strategic mistakes of its leaders,” Zarif told a parliament session in Tehran Monday.

In November 2018, an Emirati official said his country was fully complying with the US sanctions imposed the same month on the Islamic Republic. Even before that, the UAE had taken a tougher line in accordance with Saudi Arabia’s hawkish policies on Iran.

Zarif said Iran was taking the necessary diplomatic measures to ensure Abu Dhabi would no longer violate the rights of Iranian traders working in the country.

At the same time, he said, Tehran was laying the required financial groundwork in other countries in the Persian Gulf region to replace the UAE and persuade its economic interests through those nations instead.

“That means countries that have better relations with Iran and maintain a more realistic view of regional developments,” Zarif stated.

Trade between the two sides has been dwindling, falling to $17 billion in 2017 from a peak of $20 billion in 2013.

Zarif also defended Tehran’s decision to stay in the 2015 nuclear deal after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision last May to abandon the landmark agreement.

“We believe that, from the point of view of our national interests and considering all circumstances, the best choice has been made and this choice has put the U.S. in a complicated situation which it desperately tries to get out of,” Zarif explained.

Commenting on the achievement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which Iran signed with six world powers on Tehran nuclear program, he told the Iranian Parliament on Monday that ‘Iran has succeeded in exiting Chapter VII of the UN Charter which was a great defeat to the US and the Zionist regime.’

He went on to stress that enemies ‘tried for 30 years to push Iran into that particular situation but Iran managed to overcome it.’

Zarif said this achievement was one of the most remarkable gains of the nuclear deal Iran signed in 2015.

He said this was the only time a country managed to do this without suffering a significant loss.

The Chapter VII of the UN Charter says, “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

Iran foreign minister added that Iran defeated the U.S. in the UNSC four times; they will hopefully fail in Warsaw conference as they did in Riyadh meeting.