TEHRAN - In a tweet on Friday, Hussein Amir-Abdollahian, the special aide to the speaker of the Iranian Parliament on international affairs, responded to remarks by former U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, underlining the need to expel “the American cowboys” from the region.

“Brian Hook refers to the Emirati betrayal to Palestine as the New Middle East. The White House must know the New Middle East [West Asia] will take shape by forever withdrawal of America from the region. The New Middle East is a region free of the American cowboys,” Amir-Abdollahian tweeted.

The special aide was referring to a recent U.S.-brokered peace deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, which was announced on August 13 during a ceremony at the White House attended by senior U.S. officials including President Donald Trump and Brian Hook.

Under the deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed “agreed to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates,” according to a joint statement issued by the U.S., Israel and the UAE.

Speaking in the Oval Office about the UAE-Israel normalization deal, Hook said the deal was part of a “New Middle East.”

“What we see today is a new Middle East. The trend lines are very different today, and we see the future is very much in the [Persian] Gulf and with Israel, and the past is with the Iranian regime,” the outgoing U.S. special envoy to Iran claimed.

Iran strongly condemned the deal, calling it a “strategic stupidity” and a “treason” against the Palestinians.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers this ‘shameful’ action of Abu Dhabi in normalizing ties with the fake, anti-human and illegitimate Zionist regime a dangerous action and warns about any interference of the Zionist regime in equations of the Persian Gulf region and announces that the government of the Emirates and other accompanying governments must admit responsibility for consequences of this action,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on August 14.

SM/PA