Spokesman Saeid Khatibzadeh made the remarks on Thursday night with regard to a statement issued at the end of an earlier virtual ministerial meeting of the regional body. In the statement, the Arab states not only steered clear of condemning the United Arab Emirates over a recent deal that normalized its relations with Israel, but also blamed the Islamic Republic for some regional woes.
Khatibzadeh called the statement “heinous, hackneyed,” and an instance of the Arab countries being stuck “inside the vicious circle of Iranophobia and [an attempt at] legitimizing the illegitimate Zionist regime.”
The spokesman advised that those countries begin focusing on the “real source of threat to the region namely Israel” instead of issuing such hollow statements in favor of the regime and its biggest ally, the United States.
Such baseless claims, Khatibzadeh noted, come from countries that have perpetrated a “strategic mistake” by condoning normalization with Tel Aviv, and were now hurrying to deflect attention from the actual source of regional threat.
The UAE and Israel announced a deal last month that laid the groundwork for the full normalization of their relations. The US-brokered agreement was met with uniform condemnation of all Palestinian factions, who called it a stab in the back of the Palestinians and sheer betrayal of their cause.