Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has lashed out at what he described as Western governments’ interference in the West Asia region, which comprises such countries as Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Speaking to reporters after attending the Sixth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in the Kazakh capital Astana on Thursday, Raisi underlined the "endogenous nature of security" in Asia and said the intervention of foreign countries is not the “solution to the region's problems.”
The Iranian president noted that “the interference of foreign powers in the Asia region adds” to regional tensions “and this was the main issue that we raised at the CICA summit.”
The statement followed Raisi’s CICA speech, in which he specifically named Iran as a testament o the ineffectiveness of the US military-political course and sanctions. According to him, it is for this reason that Washington had to resort to destabilizing the Islamic Republic. In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump announced Washington's exit from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, while also reinstating harsh economic sanctions on Tehran, which a year later started to suspend its deal-related obligations.
"Iran focuses on the policy of good neighborliness, multipolarity and sustainable integration with a view to implementing a fair order based on cooperation and mutual respect”, Raisi pointed out.
The remarks came a few months after the Iranian president said that the US’ troop withdrawal from Syria and the entirety of West Asia is a vital component for the return of peace and stability to the region.
“[…] The Americans must leave Syria. America’s withdrawal from east of the Euphrates and the entire region is the basic and root solution to the crises in West Asia,” Raisi said, speaking to Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in Tehran in July.
US forces intervened in Syria in 2016, ostensibly to “fight Daesh*” and support local Kurdish militia units combating terrorists. Six years on, the US continues to occupy Syrian territory east of the Euphrates and an outpost on the Syrian-Iraq-Jordanian border, with the lands accounting for 90 percent of the country’s energy wealth.
Damascus has repeatedly demanded that the US leave Syrian territory immediately. In May, Foreign Minister Mekdad vowed that the US occupation of eastern Syria would soon be brought to an end, and called on US-allied Kurdish militias to realize that America would abandon them.
*Daesh (ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State), a terrorist group banned in Russia and other countries