Khamenei tangles with US over its role in the Gulf

Iran’s supreme leader said Saturday that the US is destabilizing the Persian Gulf in pursuit of its own interests and should withdraw its forces.

His comments came just after US President Barack Obama hosted Arab leaders at Camp David to assuage their security concerns, and a round of nuclear talks between Iranian negotiators and the six world powers concluded in Vienna.

“The security of the Persian Gulf is related to the regional countries that share common interests and not the US,” Khamenei told officials, according to the semi-official Fars news site. “Hence, the security of the Persian Gulf should be maintained by the countries of this very region.”

Fears about Gulf shipping come after Iranian forces seized a ship and fired on another in recent days, even as the Islamic Republic negotiates a final deal with world powers over its contested nuclear program.

“What is the US’s business?” Khamenei asked in comments posted on his website. “The US is after its own interests and it will make the region insecure.”

The site also quoted him as addressing other Gulf countries: “We are neighbors; the security of the Persian Gulf is in all our interests. If it is safe, we benefit. If it is not safe, it will be insecure for all.”

After a rare Camp David summit, Obama on Wednesday pledged Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to the Sunni governments of the Persian Gulf and even spoke of authorizing US military force if their security is endangered by Shiite Iran or anyone.

Obama’s comments sought to soothe nerves in the region over Iran, which the West also accuses of arming Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Houthis, who have swept through much of the country and pushed its president into exile. Iran and the rebels deny any military link between the Houthis and Iran, though the Islamic Republic has sent humanitarian aid.

On Thursday, an Iranian naval patrol fired on a Singapore-flagged commercial tanker in the Persian Gulf, which Iranian press linked to a dispute over an accident that damaged both the ship and an Iranian oil platform on March 22. Iran recently also detained a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship for more than a week over a claim that the Danish shipping company that chartered it owed money to an Iranian firm.

US naval forces have recently started accompanying American-flagged commercial ships passing through the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz

The measure signaled Washington’s determination to safeguard commercial shipping in the strategic waterway and to counter any potential attempt by Iran to disrupt American-flagged vessels heading through the narrow shipping channel.

In April a convoy of Iranian cargo ships that had been headed toward war-torn Yemen, possibly with advanced weaponry for Houthi rebels, reversed its direction, after the US sent an aircraft carrier to monitor the movements of Iranian ships in the region.

Khamenei also accused Washington of orchestrating the war in Yemen.

“Today Yemen has turned into the scene of massacre of innocent children and women caused by pseudo-Muslim countries, but its main mastermind and orchestrator is the US,” he said, according to Fars.

The US and other world powers hope to clinch a final nuclear deal with Iran by the end of June. This week’s talks with top officials from the kingdoms of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were announced by Obama on April 2, when a framework with the Iranians was sealed.

Washington has long provided military support to its Gulf partners, most famously by invading Iraq in 1991 after its takeover of Kuwait. But like another US ally, Israel, the Arabs fear a negotiated end to the Iran nuclear standoff would serve to enrich and empower a government already keeping Syrian President Bashar Assad in power, fueling Yemen’s rebellion, intimidating opponents in Iraq and Lebanon and meddling in the affairs of others through the region.