Ebrahim Raïssi, the Iranian president, called on the leaders of Muslim countries to classify the Israeli army as a “terrorist organization” because of the armed operation carried out in the Gaza Strip. He asks to “break all political and economic relations” with Israel, a country that Iran does not recognize.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi on Saturday in Riyadh called on Muslim countries to qualify the Israeli army as a “terrorist organization” because of its armed operation in the Gaza Strip. In his speech to Arab and Muslim leaders gathered in the Saudi capital, Ebrahim Raïssi also asked Muslim countries to prepare to “arm the Palestinians” if Israel’s “war crimes” continued. “The Israeli army must be recognized as a terrorist organization,” declared the Iranian president during the emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) devoted to the war between Israel and Hamas.
“A commercial boycott against the Zionist regime”
Hamas, supported by Iran which considers it “a liberation movement”, is classified as a terrorist organization in particular by the United States, Canada and the European Union. “Now that international organizations have become useless, we must play a role,” added Ebrahim Raïssi, urging Muslim countries to “break all political and economic relations” with Israel, which Iran does not recognize. He called for “a trade boycott against the Zionist regime, particularly in the area of energy.”
Ebrahim Raïssi once again accused the United States of being Israel’s “main partner” in these crimes. “America actually entered the war directly by sending ships” to the Eastern Mediterranean, he said. Five weeks after the start of the war triggered by the bloody attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil, on October 7, around 1,200 people were killed on the Israeli side, according to the authorities and more than 11,000 in Gaza according to the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government.
Ebrahim Raïssi’s trip to Riyadh is his first visit to Saudi Arabia since the surprise announcement in March of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two Middle East heavyweights, after seven years of rupture.