TEHRAN — Tehran has slammed Riyadh for “baseless allegations and hate-mongering”, urging Saudi Arabia to change course to avoid becoming further isolated.

“As long as Saudi rulers do not change course and fix their wrong approach, there will be no prospects for improvement of Saudi Arabia’s isolation even in the Persian Gulf region,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said at a press conference on Monday.

The remarks came after Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud urged the world to take a “decisive stance” to address Iran’s efforts to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“The kingdom stresses the dangers of Iran’s regional project, its interference in other countries, its fostering of terrorism, its fanning the flames of sectarianism and calls for a decisive stance from the international community against Iran that guarantees a drastic handling of its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction and develop its ballistic missiles program,” the king said in an annual address to a government advisory body, according to Al Jazeera.

In response, Khatibzadeh said in was not “unnatural” for Saudi rulers to make such remarks, because they repeat the same sentences which they have memorized.

He said Riyadh must know that peace cannot be attained by killing the Yemeni people, the region cannot be ruled through propagating Wahhabism and takfiri groups, money cannot be spent to lobby, and resources of the Muslim world cannot be spent to betray Palestine.

MH/PA