Mehdi Honardoost in an exclusive interview with IRNA said for the last forty years Iran has been rendering immense sacrifices to eliminate the menace of terrorism and has suffered huge human and financial losses in this regards.

He added that despite all these sacrifices the statement of Saudi official against Iran shows that he wants to distort the facts and tries to divert the world’s attention from Saudi aggressive approach. 

The diplomat expressing his views said that unfortunately in recent days the world has witnessed tragic incidents in South and West Asia which also affected close cooperation among the regional states.
‘Iran believes in regional cooperation and our collaboration with Pakistan is a major part of that,” noted the ambassador.

Mehdi Honardoost added that last week suicide attack on a bus carrying the Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel martyred 27 and wounded 13 in southeastern Iran. 

He said the terrorist group called Jaish al-Adl, claimed responsibility for the incident that is backed by some aggressive countries of the region. 

He further added, 'We believe that the aim of this attack is to harm the close relationship between Iran and neighboring countries and to create instability in the region.'

The ambassador said that some countries who are actually promoting terrorism are trying to create misunderstandings between Iran and Pakistan, however, peace lovers across the world are aware of conspiracies behind such inhuman attacks.

He strongly believed that close cooperation among regional states is a key to solve regional issues and countering the conspiracies of imperialist forces against Muslim world. He regretted that some regional countries are pursuing agenda of anti-Islam forces by spending huge amount of money to promote terrorism.

Iranian envoy said that today serious efforts are needed to root out terrorism but the policy of double standards, classifying good or bad terrorists and using the phenomenon of terrorism as a tool is a major hurdle in this regards.

Mehdi Honardoost said that no country in the world can escape from its responsibility to eliminate terrorism and the cooperation among the regional countries to address the issue is inevitable.

He was of the view that so-called alliance against terrorism is a mere eye wash. “We need a strong will and determination to root out terrorism,” said the Iranian envoy. 

The ambassador said Iran and Pakistan are fully aware of the challenges of terrorism and have the ability to take practical steps to address the issue. 

He warned that some countries which don’t want to see close relationship between Iran and Pakistan could take negative steps to disrupt this strong relationship. 

He said that Iran expects Pakistan to take practical steps and intelligence based operations on joint border to eliminate terrorism and respond positively for joint cooperation with Iran. 

Mehdi Honardoost noted that Iran and Pakistan hold very important position in the Islamic world and the region, but unfortunately, some regional countries instead of spending their money on the welfare of poor Muslim people are wasting their money to divide the region of the Middle East.