Ex-foreign minister and former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Ali Akbar Salehi, in an interview with Entekhab news website on Friday criticized Fuad Hussein who claimed in an interview with CNN that “the Iranians don’t want to or cannot attack Israel. They search for victims around them, and so they attack Erbil.”
The Iraqi foreign minister was referring to the operations last week by Iran’s IRGC forces against anti-Iran terrorist bases in Syria and a “Mossad espionage center” in northern Iraq.
The remarks by Hussein did not sit well with Salehi who said, “Mr. Fuad Hussein seems to have forgotten that without the sacrifices of the Iranian people, led by top anti-terror commander General Soleimani, in preventing Daesh from advancing into Erbil and Iraq’s Kurdistan, no trace of that land would remain now.”
The Iraqi foreign minister continued his statements by calling Iran an ‘isolated’ country in the world.
Salehi explained, “If Iran was on the front of falsehood and demons of our era, it would not be isolated. Throughout history, being on the righteousness front has usually been equal to isolation.”
Iran also had a similar experience with its eastern neighbor Pakistan last week.
The former Iranian diplomat, considering the long history of friendly ties between Iran and Pakistan, brushed aside the recent spat between the two countries as insignificant.