WarSclerotic

A senior Iranian official on Sunday declared that US efforts to secure Israel have stalled and that the Middle Eastern country feels increasingly threatened.

“Despite the great resources that the US has invested in Israel’s security, their strategies have come to a halt,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said, according to a report from the ISNA news agency.

Shakmani told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran that Israel “feels more threatened on its borders and even within them.”

Shamkhani also said US allies in the Middle East risk an uprising by their “humiliated citizens” if they continue to rely on Washington.

“Trump and even his underlings ridicule and humiliate Saudi Arabia and the [United Arab] Emirates day and night, saying that you’re nothing without us and cannot last a day without America’s support,” he said.

In October, Trump said that Saudi Arabia’s 83-year-old King Salman “might not be there for two weeks” without US military support. The comments were mostly shrugged off by Riyadh.

US President Donald Trump (C-L) and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (C-R) arrive for the Arabic Islamic American Summit at the King Abdulaziz Conference Center in Riyadh on May 21, 2017 (AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN)

“Our prediction about America’s allies in the region is that if they continue the policy of relying on Islam’s enemies, they will face the uprising of their humiliated citizens,” said Shamkhani.

Iran’s relations with its Gulf neighbors have soured in recent years and tensions escalated last month when the Islamic Republic accused Riyadh and Abu Dhabi of being complicit in a suicide bombing that killed 27 Iranian troops.

The Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards blasted the “traitorous governments of Saudi Arabia and [the] Emirates” and said Iran will no longer tolerate their “hidden support for anti-Islam thugs and Takfiri [Sunni extremist] groups.”

Mourners a carry flag-draped casket during a mass funeral for those killed in a suicide car bombing that targeted members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Isfahan, killing at least 27 people. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The February 13 bombing targeted a busload of Guards in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan and was claimed by Jaish al-Adl, a Pakistan-based extremist group blacklisted by Iran as terrorists.

Last month the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tehran has plans “to break America, Israel, and their partners and allies” in worldwide attacks.

In a speech aired February 19 on Iran’s IRINN TV, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said Iran was preparing to “fight them on the global level, not just in one spot. Our war is not a local war. We have plans to defeat the world powers,” according to a translation published by the Washington-based MEMRI watchdog.

Tehran is also a major supporter of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its “resistance” against the Islamic Republic’s arch-foe, Israel.