West has turned Middle East into powder keg with arms sales: Zarif
Tehran (KNA) - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the West has turned the Middle East into a “powder keg” with its arms sales to the Arab countries of the region, stressing that the weapons supplies have not contributed to regional security.
Over the past year alone, they [Western countries] sold 100 billion dollars' worth of weapons to the [countries] of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council. Did the weapons bring anyone security, though?" Foreign Minister Zarif said in a foreign policy speech at the University of Tehran on Sunday.
The Persian Gulf Cooperation Council groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Earlier, an annual international security report showed that arms sales to the Middle East had doubled during the period between 2013 and 2017 compared to the previous five years. The Munich Security Report 2019 also said the outsize concentration of weapons in the Middle East increased the risk of confrontation in the region.
Source: PressTV