Zarif made the remarks in a Thursday tweet in clear allusion to recent comments by US President Donald Trump, who said during a rally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on September 8 that the US was not involved in the Middle East for oil, but because we “want to protect Israel.”
Bragging about America’s energy independence during the rally, Trump said, “While I’m president, America will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. We will remain energy independent. It should be for many, many years to come. The fact is, we don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel. Other than that, we don’t have to be in the Middle East.”
Pointing to Trump’s remarks, Iran’s foreign minister tweeted, the “latest admissions by @realDonaldTrump” clearly showed “where his family's loyalty really rests.”
Zarif then recalled Trump’s past confession that the United States has spent more than seven trillion dollars on its presence in the Middle East, which is apparently aimed at nothing, but to protect the Zionist regime, asking, “Why SEVEN TRILLION hard-earned US taxpayer dollars & so many American lives have been sacrificed” just to protect Israel?”
Latest admissions by @realDonaldTrump:
-Where his family's loyalty really rests
-Why SEVEN TRILLION hard-earned US taxpayer dollars & so many American lives have been sacrificed.#IsraelFirsters have not just ruined our region—they've betrayed their own people, just for votes. pic.twitter.com/dcpZTucyxP
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) September 17, 2020
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He then concluded by saying that in their effort to provide unbridled support to Israel, American leaders who put the Tel Aviv regime ahead of all other priorities, “have not just ruined our region,” but “they've betrayed their own people, just for votes.”
Under its foreign policy, the United States goes to the extremist extent to shield and shore up Israel.
Despite the American regional presence apparently being excused under the “war on terror” terms, the roughly two-decades-old military intervention has witnessed systematic and irreparable weakening of the countries that surround the occupying entity.
The US also provides billions of taxpayer money in military assistance to the occupying regime every year that last year amounted to $3.8 billion. It also casts its veto against almost any United Nations resolutions that could take the regime to task over its continued occupation of Palestinian land and daily acts of fatal aggression against Palestinians. Thanks to Washington’s support, Tel Aviv has also unexceptionally evaded accountability over its nuclear program that is known to be the only one in the Middle East with a huge military lean.
Trump made the remarks on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, apparently trying to woo the votes of the country’s Jews and Zionist lobby in the run-up to the US presidential elections. This is while many American Jews condemn him for trying to hijack their religion for pro-Israel and pro-Zionist purposes and self-serving gains.
Zarif’s tweet also incorporated parts of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s coverage of the Carolina speech, in which the outlet showed how Trump confessed pulling the US out of a 2015 international nuclear accord with Iran and other world powers only to please Israel.
“I remember Bibi coming over and begging him, begging him to a point of humiliation that please don’t do the Iran deal,” Trump said, referring to how Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sometimes called Bibi, had asked former US President Barack Obama not to enter the nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic.
“He did it. I broke it,” Trump added.
During the speech, the US president also introduced his son-in-law and top advisor, Jared Kushner, extolling him for brokering deals earlier in the year that enabled normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two regional Arab states, and Israel.
The deals were signed officially at the White House on Tuesday, marking yet another unprecedented pro-Tel Aviv move under Trump.