Eurasia Press & News
TEHRAN (FNA)- An influential Iranian cleric said on Friday the financial crisis gripping the United States was the price Washington paid for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Islamic Republic has long called for US troops to leave the region and blamed them for sectarian violence, particularly in Iraq.
“How much the Americans have paid and been degraded in their attack against Iraq and Afghanistan is unbelievable. They have paid tremendously in terms of life, honor and financial involvement,” former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said.
Rafsanjani, who chairs the Assembly of Experts – a powerful clerical body tasked with monitoring and choosing the Supreme Leader of the country – was speaking to a large crowd of worshippers during Friday prayers on Tehran University Campus.
“If the economic crisis in America is becoming a serious threat for the West and the industrial world, one of the underlying reasons is the high costs which the Americans have been forced to spend in the region in the past seven or eight years,” Rafsanjani, who also heads the Expediency Council, said.
US lawmakers are discussing a $700 billion bailout package to rescue the faltering US financial system. Approval of the package has been held up by bickering between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
