Envoy to UN: Saudi Arabia plotting sabotage activities in Iran
In a letter to the UN Security Council, Iran’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Es’haq Al-e Habib said the Saudis are plotting to wage sabotage activities in Iran, urging the international community to stop them.
“There is enough evidence about the subversive plans of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against Iranian security and economy. This includes its publicized plan to ‘work so that the battle is … inside Iran,’ ” Al-e Habib said.
Al-e Habib was referencing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who said two years ago that any struggle for influence between the oil kingdom and Iran ought to take place “inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”
Al-e Habib said Saudi Arabia “has supported terrorist groups and criminal activities inside the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of such a plan.”
“The terrorist acts that have occurred in Iran in recent years, including those in the city of Ahvaz on 22 September 2018 and in Tehran on 7 June 2017 — both of which were condemned by the Security Council — are linked to, sponsored, or encouraged by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he added.
At least 25 people were killed and 60 others wounded after terrorists dressed as soldiers opened fire on a military parade in Ahvaz.
Also in June 2017, two simultaneous terrorist attacks in Tehran killed 17 people and wounded dozens of others. Daesh claimed responsibility for both attacks.
Al-e Habib said that Saudi Arabia tries to destabilize “the whole region,” mentioning the Us-backed Saudi-led war against impoverished Yemen as an example of such a policy.
“Only one example of such an adventurist policy of Saudi Arabia is within its widespread systematic crimes in Yemen, including the deliberate targeting of mosques, hospitals, schools and historical sites, attacking wedding and funeral ceremonies and school buses,” he said in the letter.
Pompeo’s provocative statement
Meanwhile, in another letter to the UN Secretary General, Al-e Habib condemned the provocative statement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which “he openly threatened to starve Iranians.”
In a televised interview on November 7, Pompeo said the US would impose the harshest sanctions on Iran, adding that “the Iranian leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat.”
“That statement, accompanied by the persistent wrongful acts of the United States, is an explicit viable threat to use starvation as a means of economic warfare aimed at the collective punishment of a population, thus a gross violation of the basic principles of international law,” he said.
“Given that the illegal unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States adversely and seriously affect the access of the people to medicine, pharmaceutical products and a number of other needs that are vital for their life and well-being, such policies and acts constitute a crime against humanity that is among the most serious crimes of international concern,” he added.
The Iranian envoy called on the United Nations and its member states “to condemn such outrageous policy statements, and resist such policies that threaten the very foundations of the United Nations and multilateralism.”