Mediterranean Dialogues panel debates Iran and Gaza
567 views · Published 1 December 2018 · 4:25 · Indexed 31 October 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(23 Nov 2018) The Iranian deputy foreign minister has accused the United States President of having a too-personalized perspective on Middle Eastern politics, adding that US sanctions on his country were punishing a whole nation for no reason. Speaking during the Italian led Mediterranean Dialogues conference on Friday, Seyed Kazem Sajjadpour said Iran had done nothing wrong, stressing that his country was still committed to respecting its international obligations under the framework of the Iran nuclear deal from which the US recently withdrew. Sajjadpour was talking on the same panel as Alistair Burt, the British Minister of State for the Middle East. The two had a direct confrontation on the role of western countries, US and Iran in the Middle East. According to Burt, despite the will to remain in the framework of the nuclear deal, Iran should have a different behavior toward Israel and in regard to intervention in other regional countries. Sajjadpour said that Iran was not the one conducting destabilising actions in the region, asking "who is threatening Palestinians, who is killing Palestinians on a daily basis? Who is killing reporters in their consulate? Who is, which player tried to change political regime in Syria?" Meanwhile on a different panel on Gaza, the director of the United Nations Relief and Works agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Matthias Schmale, strongly reaffirmed the need for UNRWA to keep on working in Gaza to provide food and education. The Trump administration stopped funding UNRWA last September, although it was previosuly supplying approximately 30 percent of its budget. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/5efedcd926e87e2aabaa95c624ade73c
