Opinions & Interviews
Lukashenko weighs in on conflict in Middle East
MINSK, 20 April (BelTA) - In the conflict in the Middle East, a fragile peace has won for now, but it still needs to be nurtured, and much depends on U.S. President Donald Trump, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said in an interview with RT, BelTA has learned.
“There will be no winner here. For now, peace has gained a small victory, but it’s an incredibly fragile one. That peace still needs to be nurtured. And here, much will depend on Donald Trump,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said. “It seems that his intuition and gut feeling have prevailed after all, and he understood that you cannot go further without ending up in trouble.”
The RT journalist asked the Belarusian leader for his opinion on where Iran found the strength to stand up to the United States with all its might. Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that there is no need to see any conspiracy theory in this. He pointed out that Iran knew where U.S. weapons and military equipment depots were located and was able to strike those targets.
“You brought a few hundred missiles on aircraft carriers and other ships and parked them off Iran’s coast. You have certain weapons stationed at your bases over there. That’s true. Is it surprising?” the head of state said. “Iran knew exactly where all your assets were. Every weapons depot in the neighboring Gulf countries, in the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia where you had your bases. In military terms, they were already in Iran’s crosshairs.”
At the same time, the president expressed confidence that if Iran had weapons comparable in power to those of the USA, it could at the very least wipe Israel off the face of the earth: “Their [Iran’s] technology is a step below, but not by much. They had drones and they had missiles with a range of up to 4,000 kilometers.”
The head of state added that Iran hid those weapons in the mountains, in places that are unreachable for American missiles. And just when the USA thought it had won, Iran hit with missiles and drones.
Thousands of drones. “Even Israel’s Golden [Iron] Dome couldn’t stop them, let alone your American bases in the Persian Gulf, let alone your own ships that had brought those missiles there and used them,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
In his words, the USA destroyed schools, museums, cultural sites, residential buildings, some power plants, oil installations in Iran. The USA killed the leadership of Iran. Nevertheless, this did not turn into a catastrophe for Iran, which was able to launch a retaliatory strike.
“You killed the leadership of Iran. And that will come back to bite you. After Venezuela you showed your true face. You killed people. And then what happened? When you assassinated their leaders, they got replaced by even more radical ones. You level a building in one neighborhood, but people somehow manage. It’s a warm country, after all, so they move into tents and just keep going. But when you kill children, it doesn’t make you look good. You can’t ever bring them back. But that is not the kind of thing that will break Iran. And they, with their drones, which may be a notch below American ones, yet in some ways fully their match, with their Shahed drones, struck back in kind,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
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