The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said it fully supports any further action against Iran’s regime to halt “terrorist acts” after Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran was ransacked by Iranian mobs last week.
The GCC, whose members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, “calls upon the international community to take serious measures against Iran to prevent repetition of such attack on diplomatic missions in the future,” Abdul Latif Al Zayani, the secretary-general of the council, told reporters in Riyadh Saturday after a meeting of its foreign-affairs ministers. It “welcomes the strong rejection of Iran’s actions against Saudi Arabia from neighboring Arab and Islamic countries.”
The GCC condemned the attack on the Saudi embassy and holds Iranian authorities responsible, Al Zayani said. The council stands with Saudi Arabia’s decisions against Iran’s regime, he said.
Saudi Arabian Foreign Affairs Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said while the country has no issue conducting talks with Iran’s regime, Tehran’s actions make it hard to deal with, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.
“We cannot have a country that attacks and burns embassies whether those embassies are British or American or Saudi,” Al-Jubeir said. “Iran has to make a decision whether it is a nation state or a revolution. If it is a nation state, it should act like one.”
Saudi Arabia would welcome the opportunity to see Iran “act like a normal country,” he said. “To be a peaceful country and to not interfere in the affairs of other countries in the region and to stop supporting terrorism. So that is entirely in the hands of Iran, whether it wants to be a good neighbor or if it wants to remain in a hostile environment with this region.”