Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech on Tuesday that the United Arab Emirates has ‘betrayed’ the Muslim world by reaching a deal towards ‘normalizing ties’ with Israel.
Khamenei denounced UAE for letting “Zionist regime to enter the region and forgot Palestine.” He said that the deal won’t last long, but this “stigma” will always be remembered. Khamenei said that the “Emiratis” will be “disgraced.” “I hope they wake up and compensate for what they did”, he added.
The Iranian officials have vehemently criticized the US-brokered the ‘peace agreement’ between the United Arab Emirates and Iran’s longtime regional archrival – Israel. Some Iranian officials even said the normalization of will augur a conflagration in the region.
The ‘Israel-UAE peace agreement’ was brokered by the United States and agreed to by the UAE and Israel. This peace accord is expected to be signed in the White House in early September. Following this deal, UAE will be the first country in the Persian Gulf and third in the Muslim world – after Egypt and Jordan which both normalized ties with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively – to officially recognize Israel and normalize ties with it. For its end of the bargain, Israel would suspend its plans to annex 30% of the disputed West Bank. Both countries have progressed quite a bit in this accord and will cooperate in many sectors, including education, tourism, healthcare, trade and security.
This agreement is also officially known as the “Abraham Accord” in the honor of Abraham, the patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Abraham Accord, which was partly galvanized by the UAE and Israel’s mutual fear of Iran, was celebrated as a “huge win” for Donald Trump and America by the US officials. UAE says that this agreement would ward off the “threats facing the Two-state solution” (a suggested solution of the decades-long conflict that envisages an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel) and would make sure that it remains intact. In a joint statement, US, UAE and Israel considered this agreement a “historic diplomatic breakthrough” that will chart a new path to “unlock great potential in the region.”
The Palestinians have unanimously rejected the Abraham Accord, calling it a “stab in the back” of Palestine and all the Arab nations. The Palestinians condemned as an outlandish denial of human rights. This agreement has also received an outright rejection or lukewarm reactions from other Muslim countries.