Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that a deal on the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates brings Tel Aviv's disintegration closer, according to Press TV.
Velayati argued that the move would further turn people in the Middle East against Israel, which will accelerate the breakdown of the Jewish state.
On 13 August, US President Donald Trump announced that Washington had brokered a peace deal between UAE and Israel, under which Abu Dhabi is expected to begin the process of recognizing and normalizing relations with Tel Aviv. Trump said a signing ceremony is anticipated at The White House within the next three weeks.
The UAE-Israel agreement has been condemned by the Palestinians, saying it was a "stab in the back" and a betrayal of their cause by Abu Dhabi. Iran has also rejected the move.
Khamenei’s aide slammed the deal as “ignominious and reprehensible”, saying it would result in Abu Dhabi’s isolation, alienation from the rest of the international Muslim community, and an awakening of the region that “will precipitate the Zionist regime’s disintegration”.
Velayati stated that historically, since the "occupation" of Palestinian and other Arab territories by Israel, all of Tel Aviv's victories were owed to a “lack of alignment and necessary cooperation within the Arab world” as well as to “some Arab states’ clandestine collaboration with the global arrogant powers and the Zionist lobby”. He added that the situation was balanced following Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The official said that the removal of the country’s US-backed and Israel-allied former regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi “invited a new phase in the developments that concerned Palestine, and the course of the [regional] resistance tipped the balance of power in favor of the oppressed people of Palestine”.
Velayati said that Israel’s biggest ally, the US, suffered a “terrible defeat” after its failure to adopt the so-called 'Deal of the Century', which would have granted Israel another large part of Palestinian lands on the West Bank, suggested by Trump earlier this year. He also argued that the Trump administration failed to “break down the axis of resistance in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen”.
The advisor called on Muslim nations across the world to “openly condemn” the UAE-Israel deal and to “spare no effort until the final victory of the Palestinian cause, i.e. disintegration and fall of the usurping Zionist government.”
On Saturday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani fiercely denounced the UAE-Israeli normalization attempt as a “huge mistake” and a betrayal of the Muslim and Arab world, arguing that the move was made primarily to support Trump's November re-election bid.
“They (the UAE) have committed a huge mistake, a treacherous act. We hope they will realise this and abandon this wrong path,” Rouhani said in a televised speech on Saturday. “Why then did it happen now? If it weren’t a wrong deal, why was it then announced in a third country, in America? So a gentleman in Washington wins votes, you betray your country, your people, Muslims and the Arab world?”
