Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, accused the United States on Monday of trying to take control of Iran's oil resources and divide the country, after an influential US senator talked about the money that Washington will earn from the military operation carried out alongside Israel, reports Al Jazeera.
“Their plan is clear, their initiative is as obvious as possible – they aim to dismember our country in order to illegally take possession of our oil wealth,” Baghaei charged at a news conference held after Iran's Assembly of Experts appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, to replace his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the country's new supreme leader.
“Their goal is to violate our sovereignty, defeat our people and undermine our humanity,” the Tehran spokesman added, with his comments not entirely clear whether he was referring only to the US or Israel as well. He accused the two countries of “violating all international norms and practices” with the concerted attack they launched against Iran on February 28.
A Trump ally has vowed that the war against Iran is worth the money
His comments came after US Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican known for his “hawkish” stances on foreign policy, described the money the US is spending to topple the Tehran regime as a “good investment”.
“When this regime falls, we're going to have a new Middle East, and we're going to make a lot of money,” Graham, a longtime supporter of intervention against Iran, said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
Graham added that US-Israeli attacks on Iran would intensify further in the next two weeks and that the US would “bomb the hell out of these people”.
“No one will threaten anymore [Statele Unite] in the Strait of Hormuz”, the Republican senator also said as the price of oil exploded on Monday morning.
Graham, a Trump ally and one of Israel's most vocal supporters in the US Congress, also drew a parallel to the US military intervention in Venezuela, which ousted President Nicolas Maduro from power and brought him to the US to face US justice.
“Venezuela and Iran have 31 percent of the world's oil reserves. We're going to have a partnership with 31 percent of the known reserves. That's China's nightmare. It's a good investment,” Graham said.
