“The betrayal will not last long,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on Twitter. (Proceedings)
Tehran:
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday accused the United Arab Emirates of betraying the Muslim world with his agreement to normalize relations with Tehran’s arch enemy Israel.
“The #UAE betrayed the world of Islam, the Arab nations, the countries of the region and #Palestina,” Khamenei said, according to his official Twitter account.
“Of course, this betrayal will not last long, but the stigma will remain with them,” he added in a series of tweets.
In the deal, only the third of its kind that it has reached with an Arab country, Israel vowed to suspend the annexation of Palestinian land.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that this did not mean that Israel was abandoning plans to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“I hope the Emiratis will wake up soon and make up for what they have done,” Khamenei said.
“The rulers of the United Arab Emirates opened the door to the region to the Zionists, and they have ignored and normalized the question of Palestine.”
It was Khamenei’s first reaction to the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel that was announced by US President Donald Trump on August 13.
His comments came after a US-Israeli delegation landed in Abu Dhabi on Monday on the first direct commercial flight from Tel Aviv to mark the normalization of ties, and Saudi Arabia allowed the flight to cross its airspace.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry had previously denounced the deal as an act of “strategic stupidity.”
The United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations with Iran in January 2016 amid mounting tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic republic.
Relations between Tehran and Riyadh deteriorated further last year after a series of attacks on tankers in sensitive Gulf waters, which Washington blamed on Iran.
Tehran denied the accusation.
Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two main powers in the region, take opposite sides in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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