IRAN WARNS WESTERN POWERS ‘We will not wait for approval to produce weapons’
IRAN’S President Hassan Rouhani has declared that Tehran will not wait for any permission to produce the weapons it needs to defend the country.
In a speech marking Iran’s Army Day yesterday, Rouhani said a strong military is an effective deterrence against foreign threats.
“If there is any weapon we need, we will develop it for the most part, or procure it if necessary,” Rouhani was quoted by Iran’s Mehr news agency as saying. “We will not wait for approval from the world.” Rouhani said countries that rely on their domestic capabilities “feel the true sense of sovereignty and power”.
In recent days, there have been reports that European countries are considering measures against Iran’s ballistic missile programme, in an effort to persuade US President Donald Trump to maintain the Iran nuclear deal.
Iran has insisted that its missile programme is not negotiable. It said it is only for defence purposes, and not intended to carry any nuclear weapons.
During the military parade in the capital Tehran on Wednesday, Iran’s military unveiled its domestically manufactured missile system, Kamin-2, which is a portable device designed “to target enemy drones flying in low altitude”, according to the English-language state television, Press TV.
Other military hardware on display were several missile and radar systems, as well as tanks, armoured vehicles and sniper rifles.
At the event, Rouhani declared that Iran’s armed forces have never been more influential “on the course of regional and global developments”.
He warned Western powers against flooding the Middle East with more weapons, saying they are driving conflict in the region.
“I am calling on them to stop filling up our region with various weapons for the sake of their own interests,” he said.
Rouhani said the only path to establish peace in the region is through diplomatic and peaceful means.
“Our policy towards the region is based on good neighbourliness; we want to be a good neighbour to them and want them in turn to be a good neighbour to us.”
“We want friendly ties with neighbouring countries and want them to know that our weapons, missiles and tanks will not be used against any of them,” Rouhani said.
Saudi Arabia and its allies consider Iran as a threat to regional security, accusing Tehran of being a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
Meanwhile, France is pursuing an ambitious foreign policy under President Emmanuel Macron that seeks to restore Paris’ clout and influence in the Middle East, analysts have said.
In what marked a new phase in Macron’s presidency, France joined the United States and the UK on April 14 in dropping 105 bombs on three facilities in Syria said to be associated with the use of chemical weapons.
Forty-year-old Macron, who in May 2017 became France’s youngest-ever president, said he “convinced” his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to carry out the attacks and stay in Syria “for the long term” after a suspected chemical weapons attack on the former rebel-held stronghold of Douma killed dozens of people, according to rescuers and medics.
“Ten days ago, President Trump was saying the United States had a duty to disengage from Syria,” Macron told French TV channel BFM in a two-hour live interview.
“We convinced him that it is necessary to stay for the long-term.”
Macron also said that he was willing to play the role of intermediary between the US and Russia — a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — and find a “sustainable” political solution in Syria.
He had previously offered to serve as an interlocutor in the long-running conflict and set up an international contact group to revive stalled peace talks in the Swiss city of Geneva.
“France has managed to maintain relatively good ties with Russia, despite the high levels of tensions between Russia and the West,” Agathe Demarais, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera.
“Macron plans to visit St Petersburg in June, where he will meet with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the Russian army didn’t acknowledge the French participation to air strikes in Syria, probably in an effort to preserve France-Russia bilateral ties,” she said.
But while Saturday’s attacks were his first major military decision since he came to office, it was not the first time the young leader intervened in conflicts and crises abroad.
In his first major foreign policy speech after his inauguration, Macron said: “France is no longer in a situation, as it was in the mid-1970s, where it could say: ‘I’m a medium power, protected and supported by major powers that share the same values.’
“France must become a great power again. That’s a necessity.”
Analysts said that in recent years, France has been quick to intervene militarily in conflicts in Africa —such as Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic — but has only recently become a major diplomatic force in the Middle East. “Macron is extremely opportunistic and is filling a void left by the US and the UK in the Middle East, positioning France as a playmaker in the region along with Russia,” said Olivier Guitta, the managing director of GlobalStrat, a geopolitical risk consultancy firm. — Al Jazeera