Saudi regime nearing its end: Academic

Press TV has interviewed Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, to ask for his take on a recent deadly crush outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which claimed the lives of thousands of pilgrims.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Saudi Arabia still refuses to accept any responsibility and they are still sticking to day-one figure of 764 deceased pilgrims. Does that make any sense when we have just 464 Iranians alone? Your thoughts sir.

Marandi: Obviously, it does not make any sense but what does make sense in the world we are living today where United States supports the atrocities in Yemen and Western human rights organizations are complacent in their silence or when the United States, Obama, leads the plan to create a civil war in Syria which leads to death of hundreds of thousands of people and the Western media silence and approving. Obviously - under such circumstances - when the figure in Makkah is much greater than what the Saudis have announced, the Western media’s silence about it, I think that should be a lesson for all of us as how the United States, the Europeans, the Western media, the Arabic media controlled by the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis function.

Obviously, Saudi Arabia by continuing to go down this road of insult and contempt is ultimately going to see a very difficult situation. I think Ayatollah Khamenei’s statements yesterday were very important. Very important for the Saudi regime to recognize that he is very serious, that he means what he says and says what he means.

Press TV: It is one thing for the Saudi officials to blame the Hajj pilgrims or attribute this accident “will of God”, but for now at this point again they have remained deceitful about the true number of pilgrims or the injured and uncooperative with host countries these people are from. What does it say about the Saudi regime?

Marandi: Well it shows that the Saudi royal family is unanswerable to anyone and that it has absolutely no shame. On the one hand, the argument that they put forward is inconsistent because in one statement they said it is an “act of God”, on the other, they blamed Africans which I thought was a very racist statement that the Saudi regime directed towards the people of Africa.

But to have thousands of people died in one incident and over a hundred in a second and not to even express the slightest remorse shows that this regime is irredeemable. Hopefully, we are seeing the last days and months and years of this regime. This is a dying regime that has overextended its hand in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. It is at war with the Arab nations of Syria and Iraq and Yemen and Bahrain.

It [Saudi regime] cannot sustain this position. This is the maximum of its position that it has taken and it wishes to confront Iran alongside with its Arab nations. It will definitely fail in a very catastrophic way. 

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