Zarif slams Saudi ‘vision of light spin’, US ‘credit-grabbing’ for Daesh defeat

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the US and Saudi Arabia cannot alter the facts on the ground about their sponsorship of Daesh and Iran’s role in defeating the Takfiri terrorist group.

In a post on his Twitter account on Thursday, Zarif reacted to latest remarks by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who accused Iran of backing sectarianism.

Speaking at a panel in the World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos on Wednesday, Jubeir claimed that Iran was promoting a “vision of darkness” in the region while the Saudi Arabia had a “vision of light.”

“In the Middle East, we have two competing visions. Vision of light … and we have a vision of darkness, and the vision of darkness is sectarianism, it’s trying to restore an empire that was destroyed thousands of years ago, it’s using sectarianism and terrorism in order to interfere in the affairs of other countries,” he said.

In response, Zarif said that no “alternative facts” provided by Riyadh and Washington could diminish Iran’s successful contribution to the Daesh defeat.

Saudi Arabia is widely viewed as the homeland of radical Wahhabism, the same ideology influencing Takfiri outfits such as Daesh, which have been wreaking havoc in the Middle East and beyond for years. The US has also been supporting different terrorist groups in the region.

On the contrary, Iran has been assisting Syria and Iraq in their counter-terrorism fights at the request of their respective governments.