Alwaght- Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani says Riyadh could not assassinate the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi without a protection offered to it from Washington.
The Iranian president was talking during a cabinet meeting in Tehran.
"No one would imagine that in today's world and a new century that we would witness such an organized murder and a system would plan out such a heinous murder," Rouhani said, according to IRNA news agency.
Rouhani said that he did not think that Saudi leaders could commit such a crime without a diplomatic cover from the US.
Khashoggi’s death has triggered still-unfolding global outrage.
The vocal critic of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman entered the Saudi embassy in Istanbul on October 2 to get papers for his marriage to a Turkish national. Saudi agents, believed to be 15, killed and dismembered him. His body is yet to be found
Washington has been shielding the Saudis militarily and diplomatically in the region while they are engaged in various regional crises. In 2015, newly-installed Saudi leaders, King Salman and his son Mohammed, seen by the world a de facto ruler of the oil-rich monarchy, launched an aggression against neighboring Yemen. The war so far killed thousands and displaced millions, mainly women and children.
"If there was no American protection, would the people of Yemen still have faced the same brutal bombing?" Rouhani said.
Rouhani also called for the Turkish authorities to carry out a thorough investigation into the murder.
The US has been unceasingly providing the Saudi campaign with assistance, both logistically and militarily. The US Army’s tankers refuel the Saudi bombers over Yemen regularly.
Saudi Arabia is also involved in the crisis of Syria, where the US built a coalition of Western allies and intervened in 2014 while uninvited by the Syrian government.
The Saudi-American cooperation goes on against mounting opposition around the world and the US which is benefiting hugely from arms sales to the kingdom.
Trump recently said that he believed the Saudi explanation of killing of the US-based Saudi national.
Iran has been accusing the two sides of assisting terrorism in Syria, adding that the terrorists could not resist a strong-fisted campaign of Damascus and its allies Moscow, Tehran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah without the couple’s help.
