Iran’s Zarif phones Abbas to voice opposition to Trump plan

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to reiterate Tehran’s opposition to US President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

Speaking with Abbas, Zarif expressed his support for the “rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination and the embodiment of establishing an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Palestinian Authority news service Wafa reported.

Zarif also said that Iran is working to forge “an international consensus” against the Trump plan and called for renewed efforts at Palestinian unity between the West Bank-based Fatah and the Hamas terror group, which rules the Gaza Strip. Tehran has long been a patron of Hamas, which took over Gaza from Fatah in a bloody coup in 2007.

Zarif and other Iranian leaders have vocally opposed the deal, with Iran’s foreign ministry dubbing it “the treason of the century.”

Trump’s “objective is the realization of the goal of the crusaders and Zionists,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said during a brief press conference in Tehran last week.

The US plan, seen as overwhelmingly supportive of Israeli goals, has been firmly rejected by the Palestinians.