The deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs in Tehran warned the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday that it will “regret” its decisions against Iran and Hezbollah, Quds Press has reported. He did not elaborate on the warning. The OIC meeting was held over two days in Istanbul this week under the chairmanship of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“In the current situation, the OIC’s general atmosphere is not really indicative of cooperation among Islamic countries and unity in the Muslim world,” added Abbas Araghchi. His criticism was publicised by several Iranian media outlets.
According to the Iranian official, the OIC suffers from structural and organisational weaknesses. He noted the OIC’s position during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when it backed Baghdad, whereas in the Iraq-Kuwait dispute, the organisation supported Kuwait.
Araghchi expressed his regret that the OIC had only taken a united stance on a few occasions, for which he gave the credit to Iran. Most of those positions, he claimed, were taken outside the dominant members of the OIC; he cited the war in Bosnia as an example.
“When it comes to the internal issues of the Muslim world, there is no such unity due to the dominance of some countries, which try to advance their own interests in the name of the organisation,” Araghchi claimed. Financial influence is used to promote their own agendas, he added, before pointing out that the final statement of the Istanbul meeting was prepared in February in Jeddah. No Iranian representatives were involved because Saudi Arabia did not issue entry visas for them.
“The 200 articles in the statement,” he revealed, “included issues related to Palestine and the formation of the Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees, in addition to other issues around the Muslim world, including Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict.”