Dismantle 'network of terrorism'
US President Donald Trump yesterday held talks with leaders of the oil-rich Gulf monarchies, a day after Washington told their arch rival Iran to dismantle its "network of
terrorism".
Tehran and Riyadh are regional arch-rivals which accuse each other of sponsoring fundamentalist militias aligned to their competing sects of Islam in war zones across the Middle East.
The GCC groups Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, all of which are traditional allies of Washington.
Most GCC monarchies accuse Tehran of meddling in their internal affairs and want Washington to be tougher with Iran, which secured a landmark nuclear deal with world powers when Trump's predecessor Barack Obama was in office.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Saturday demonstrated a tougher position on Tehran, saying multi-billion-dollar defence deals signed with Riyadh aim to protect Saudi Arabia from a "malign Iranian influence."
In a joint press conference with his Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir, Tillerson urged newly re-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to dismantle his country's "network of terrorism" and end "ballistic missile testing."
Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hit back to Saudi Arabia.
In an editorial published yesterday, he advised Trump to discuss how to avoid another September 11 attack with the Saudi hosts of his first official visit abroad.
Critics of Saudi Arabia say its strict view of Islam fuels Sunni extremism, called takfir, and some even accuse the kingdom of responsibility for the September 11 attacks. Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.
"(Trump) must enter into dialogue with them about ways to prevent terrorists and takfiris from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the September 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries," Zarif wrote for the website of the London-based Al Araby Al-Jadeed news network.
Meanwhile, a senior Saudi cabinet minister yesterday said the scandals besetting Trump at home have no bearing on an increasingly close relationship with Saudi Arabia.
The past week has seen a string of major developments in Trump's domestic woes, including the announcement that James Comey, the former FBI chief fired by Trump, has agreed to testify publicly about Russian interference in the US elections last year.
And Israel yesterday gave a muted response to a mammoth $110 billion arms deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia announced a day earlier.
"This is a matter that really should trouble us," said Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz prior to the weekly cabinet meeting, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no mention of the deal in his customary public remarks.
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