TEHRAN – Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi has responded to the recent anti-Iran statements by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying the remarks shows bin Salman’s “immature, unsophisticated behavior.”

“The adventurist Saudi crown prince’s mistakes, latest of which was the scandalous meddling [of Riyadh] in Lebanon’s internal affairs, have even disturbed Saudi Arabia’s traditional allies,” Qassemi said in a statement on Friday.

He also advised bin Salman to think about the ultimate fate of the previous dictators in the region instead of looking up to them as his role models.

The Saudi crown prince recently revealed that Riyadh prefers a confrontational approach to “appeasement” in dealing with Iran.

In an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday, he made an analogy between Iran’s growing regional influence and Germany’s hegemonic policies in the Hitler era and said, “We learned from Europe that appeasement does not work.”

Earlier this year, bin Salman threatened to move the “battle” to Iran, to the escalation of worries over Tehran-Riyadh relations.

MH/SP