Iranian FM: Everybody Shocked by Trump’s Golan Heights Claims

TEHRAN (defapress)- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in a tweet on Friday, said that all ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) participating in the Istanbul meeting were taken aback by US President Trump’s announcement about the Golan Heights of Syria occupied by Israel.

News ID: 76331

Date: 23 March 2019 - 00:36

“With OIC ministers in Turkey; all condemn barbaric Christchurch terror against Muslims & seek to unite against dangerous tide of racism & Islamophobia in the West. All shocked by @realDonaldTrump continuing to try to give what is not his to racist Israel: first Al-Quds & now Golan,” wrote Zarif in a post on his Twitter page today.

His tweet was posted a few minutes after his address to an emergency meeting of OIC in Istanbul, held over the recent terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 49 people and injured dozens of others.

In his speech, the Iranian top diplomat said that many anti-Islamic networks active in the West are financed by government-tied tycoons in the US.

“The continued disregard by the Trump administration for the right of Muslims and Arabs has reached the abhorrent level of giving away what is not theirs, be at Al-Quds Al-Sharif or the occupied Golan to the aggressive Zionist entity which is at the forefront of violating international law while promoting Islamophobia as well as division within the Muslim Ummah,” he went on denouncing Washington’s current president for his hostile remarks and measures against Muslims and Arabs.

Earlier in the morning, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi, in a statement, categorically condemned the recent remarks by Trump on the Golan Heights, reiterating that Tel Aviv has no sovereignty over Arab lands.

Personal and rash decisions of Trump will lead the critical region of the Middle East into successive crises, Qassemi highlighted, in a statement today where he vehemently denounced the recent remarks by US President Donald Trump on the occupied Golan Heights.

Israel, as an occupying regime, does not have sovereignty over any Arab and Islamic lands, and its aggressions and occupations should be stopped immediately, Qassemi said, noting that according to the UN Security Council resolution, Golan is part of the Syrian soil.

“There is no other solution to this than to end the occupation," the Iranian diplomat stressed.

The interventionist decision of the US president on the issue of Golan does not change the nature of Syria’s sovereignty over the region, and furthermore, it clearly proves the failure of compromising policies while at the same time ratifying the right path of the Resistance Front against the aggressive and expansionist nature of the United States and the Zionist regime, the senior diplomat added.

Referring to Trump’s violations of numerous UNSC resolutions and international laws, Qassemi reminded that the US president's policies are "dangerous" for all the world and especially for the Middles East.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will closely monitor all future developments and will adopt appropriate policies in cooperation and consultation with the Syrian government and other countries,” he highlighted.

US President Donald Trump said, on Thursday in a post on his Twitter page, that it was time to back what he described as the Israel’s "sovereignty" over the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory under Israeli occupation since 1967.

"After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" he said in his tweet.

In 1967, Israel waged a full-scale war against Arab territories, during which it occupied a large swathe of Golan and annexed it four years later, a move never recognized by the international community.

In 1973, another war broke out and a year later, a UN-brokered ceasefire came into force, according to which Tel Aviv and Damascus agreed to separate their troops and create a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

Syria said last month that it is ready to go to another war with Israel in order to free its occupied territories.

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