December 29, 2017
The senior foreign policy aide to the Supreme Leader publicly boasted last week that Iran provides arms to Iraq and Syria, thereby giving more ammunition to the United States as it tries to get the United Nations to approve more sanctions on Iran.
A UN Security Council resolution approved in July 2015 forbids Iran from exporting arms to any foreign countries. The US has been pointing to missiles fired from Yemen into Saudi Arabia as proof that Iran is violating the resolution. Iran denies it has sold missiles to Yemen—but boasts of selling arms elsewhere.
“We are not worried about the fact that the world knows Iran has given arms to Iraq, Syria or Lebanon,” Ali-Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, told Iran’s Arabic News Channel Al-Alam December 20.
Velayati said, “These weapons are used to confront Daesh and other Takfiri [Sunni extremist] terrorist movements in the region.”
Meanwhile, he maintained Iran has never provided the Houthis in Yemen with missiles.
The United States has not responded to Velayati’s remarks since he made them and may not realize what he said.
Over the years, Iranian generals have often boasted of selling weapons to dozens of foreign countries, saying that is proof of the quality of Iranian weapons, but those remarks go unnoticed in most of the Western media.