Saudi writer says fall of Iranian regime is not in region’s interest

The former General Manager of Al-Arabiya News Channel, Saudi writer Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, has said that the fall of the regime of President Hassan Rouhani in Iran is not in the interests of the other countries in the region.

“The collapse of the Iranian regime is not in everyone’s interests, especially those of the Arab countries,” Al-Rashed wrote in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. He pointed out that the region now suffers from a lot of destruction and cannot tolerate new chaos, additional civil wars and millions of refugees.

The collapse of the Iranian government will have dangerous dimensions that would spread beyond Iran to the entire region, he claimed. The current protests against the government in cities across Iran, however, might only succeed in changing Tehran’s foreign policy and stop its aggressive project in the Middle East, which would, in his opinion, be in the interests of regional countries.

“The ideal option would be if the Iranian people protests managed to change Iranian policy and forced the regime to focus on internal reform and development compared to the scary scenario if the regime collapsed,” he added. “The truth is that the regime in Tehran is strong in its structures and institutions, and it is not easy to remove it through demonstrations alone.”

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