The tone does not encourage appeat. This Saturday, during the emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) devoted to the war between Israel and HamasIranian President Ebrahim Raïssi called on Muslim countries to label the Israeli army 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, he also asked Muslim countries to prepare to “arm the Palestinians” if Israel’s “war crimes” continued.
Hamas, supported by Iran which considers it “a liberation movement”, is clified as a terrorist organization notably by the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Call for a “boycott” with Israel
“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 energy sector.”
Ebrahim Raïssi once again accused the United States of being “the main partner” of Israel “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 Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil, 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 Hamas government’s Ministry of Health.
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.