Spokesman Rejects Bahrain’s Accusations against Iran

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed Bahrain’s recent claims against Iran as baseless, and said such allegations are meant to deviate the public opinion from the crimes committed by the al-Khalifa regime against the Bahraini people.

“The remarks by certain officials of the regional countries who are faced with their people’s demands are not the solution to these countries’ internal problems,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said in his weekly press conference in Tehran on Tuesday.

His remarks came after Bahrain’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa on Saturday claimed that Manama has dismantled a “terrorist cell” linked to Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Mehman-Parast blasted the allegations, and said, “If the people of the regional states have some demands, they should be materialized, and accusing other states, including Iran, will not solve any problem. Therefore, these states had better listen to their people’s voice instead of speaking about unreal issues.”

Anti-government protesters have been holding peaceful demonstrations across Bahrain since mid-February 2011, calling for an end to the al-Khalifa dynasty’s over-40-year rule, end of discrimination, establishment of justice and a democratically-elected government as well as freedom of detained protesters.

So far, tens of people have been killed, hundreds have gone missing and thousands of others have been injured.

In a recent development, hundreds of thousands of Bahraini protesters took to the streets in the capital Manama and other cities across the Persian Gulf island to mark the second anniversary of their uprising against the Al-Khalifa regime in February 2011, calling on the country’s rulers to step down.

More than 300,000 protesters poured to the streets across the tiny Persian Gulf island country on Friday in a bid to celebrate the beginning of the third year of their revolution against the al-Khalifa regime which started on February 14, 2011.

The massive population of protesters reiterated their opposition to dictatorship in the country, and called on the al-Khalifa regime to step down.

The al-Khalifa regime’s security forces killed two protesters during popular protests on Thursday.