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America should work with Iran rather than Saudi Arabia: American academic

Sunday, 16 December 2018 7:44 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 16 December 2018 7:58 AM ]

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (C-R) speaks while seated with US journalist Robin Wright (C-L), during a session of the Doha Forum in the Qatari capital, on December 15, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

America should be cooperating with Iran rather than terror-sponsoring Saudi Arabia, says an American university professor, adding that it is “very shameful” that things are currently the other way around, Press TV reports.

In an interview with Press TV on Sunday, Paul Sheldon Foote, a professor at the California State University, said the United States government was portraying Iran as a foreign threat to “scare the American public” and to sell more weapons to countries in the same region as Iran.

US government officials, he said, “always need one enemy to scare the American voters” and “sell more weapons to the rest of the world.”

“It is very shameful that today Americans are on the other side, supporting the evil Saudi leaders who have been the funders of terrorists” and that US officials are “punishing Iran, whereas Iran is the one who should be the one we (Americans) cooperate with.”

Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an address to the Doha Forum 2018 in Qatar on Saturday that if the US and its Western allies — who have been supporting Saudi Arabia under all circumstances — want to have more stability in the Middle East, they “need to show that bad behavior would get a bad response.”