Western sanctions against Iran inflamed sectarian tensions
▻http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Dec-21/281786-western-sanctions-against-iran-inflamed-sectarian-tensions-leba
Decades of Western pressure and sanctions on Iran have inflamed sectarian tensions across the region, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said.
In a lecture Friday at Central University of Chile in Santiago, Bassil denounced isolationist policies imposed by powerful nations against their foes as dangerous, destructive and counterproductive.
“The enormous pressures exerted on Iran, politically and economically, have evidently fueled the sectarian tensions in the Middle East, namely on the emerging Sunni-Shiite lines,” Bassil said according to remarks released by his media office.
But he noted that the same policies “actually pushed Iran to take on a principled and firm political opposition to the West, and gave room for more radical positions on the nuclear dossier,” which were the opposite of what the United States and Europe had sought.