Iranian Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lashed out at the United States for backing its regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. The strong Iranian condemnation of the US-Saudi alliance comes after Washington signed a 100 billion dollars arms deal with Riyadh, aimed at significantly strengthening the outdated Saudi military in the midst of growing Iranian aggressions in the region.
That said, Iran’s supreme leader declared that even with the multi-billion-dollar arms deal, the Saudi aspiration of a Sunni-Muslim dominated region will utterly fail, as the Iranian-backed Shi’ite alliance will prevail: “Even with a multi-billion-dollar bribe to America, the Saudis cannot achieve their goals in the region,” said Khamenei.
The Iranian-Saudi rivalry, in which both countries back dozens of proxies in the region, has stepped up in recent weeks, with Washington vowing to actively back its Sunni-Muslim allies in the face of growing Iranian influence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.