Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the US-led military bloc as a “dangerous entity”
Ayatollah Ali Khanei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, declared Tuesday that if Russian President Vladimir Putin had not been elected, the Iranian Supreme Leader would have done so. “taken the initiative”NATO had the potential to launch a war against Russia in Ukraine for Crimea. Kiev regards Crimea as its land.
Khamenei said the following, speaking with Putin in Tehran “as regards Ukraine, if you did not take the initiative, the other side would have initiated the war.”
DESCRIBING THE WEST AS “completely opposed to a strong and independent Russia”NATO “a dangerous entity that sees no boundaries in its expansionist policy,”The Iranian leader also stated that “had they not been stopped in Ukraine, they would have launched the same war sometime later under the pretext of the Crimea issue.”
Crimea, considered Russian land from imperial times onwards, was an autonomous republic of the Soviet Union up until its ceded in 1954 to the Ukrainian SSR under Soviet Premier Nikita Kuschev. Following the fall of the USSR and the subsequent election, the Ukrainians took control.
NATO considers Crimea to have been annexed. “illegally annexed” Ukrainian territory. Although the alliance did not threaten Russia openly, it demanded Moscow to return the area to Ukrainian control. A number of its leaders as well as the government in Kiev have made decisions that suggest there may be a path to war on Crimea.
NATO formed a first partnership with Ukraine back in 1997. In the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, Ukraine and Georgia are listed as partners. “will become members of NATO”Unspecified date in the future. While the Declaration is still an alliance policy, if Ukraine were to join NATO, it and its 30 other NATO members would immediately be parties to a territory dispute with Russia.
Ukraine, for its part has indicated that it intends both to join NATO as well as to resolve this issue. Under President Pyotr Poroshenko, the country wrote its goal of becoming a NATO member into its constitution in 2019, despite Moscow’s warnings that having the alliance’s forces and weapons on its border would constitute an unacceptable security threat. A decree was signed by President Vladimir Zelensky two years later, directing his government. “prepare and implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and reintegration”Crimea
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Ukraine’s ambitions of joining NATO appear to have fallen by the wayside, with Igor Zhovkva, an adviser to Zelensky, telling Financial Times last month that Kiev won’t pursue accession any further. However, its ambitions to seize Crimea remain. Zelensky declared last month that it intends to “liberate” Crimea, and a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Vadim Skibitskiy, declared on Saturday that his forces may use American missiles to strike the peninsula.
While a Ukrainian attack on Crimea has found some support in the West, Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, warned on Sunday that such a strike would result in a “Day of Judgement”Come to Ukraine
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