Ali Motahari, the deputy speaker of the parliament said in an interview that “Iran’s military presence in Syria antagonized the Saudis,” and “we were at fault regarding the Saudis. We should not have forced them to get close to Israel.”

He went on to say that the protest of the Syrians against their government was a “public uprising”, but we deployed military forces to defend the Syrian regime.

Motahari added that such issues should be resolved through cooperation with Islamic countries.  

He also proposed that “Islamic countries should create an Islamic NATO to defend each other against the foreigners.”

He also stated that when the Islamic Republic infiltrates other countries of the region in the name of Shia Islam, it frightens the Arab countries and they distance themselves from us.

Motahari emphasized that on the issue of Saudi Arabia, just like the JCPOA, “we were at fault and we shouldn’t have given any excuses to the enemy. He added: “The supreme leader’s subordinate organizations were against the implementation of JCPOA.”

He also criticized launching missiles at a bad time which turned everyone against it and added: “Our logic is correct that Israel must be annihilated, but it wasn’t the right time to write “Israel must be destroyed” on our missiles in Hebrew.”

He referred to the experts’ opinion that it was impossible to continue to nuclear program, and said that if we were after the nuclear bomb, then “JCPOA was a bad thing”.