TEHRAN - Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps second-in-command, said on Saturday that the U.S. policies and strategies in the Middle East region have ended in failure.

“The U.S. spent a lot and at the end left Syria. The U.S. signed the JCPOA [the 2015 nuclear deal] and then pulled out of it. The U.S. gets involved in economic war with the powers that it has economic relations with. All of these show the U.S. failure in political arena,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference at the Supreme National Defense University.

The general said, “The Iranian people have found their way in such atmosphere and are aware that the major powers have limited capabilities and give in to the reality if they face resistance.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on December 19 announced that U.S. troops had defeated the Daesh terrorists in Syria and he sought to pull some 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi has welcomed Trump’s decision, saying the U.S. military presence in the Middle East fuels insecurity in the region.

“Basically, U.S. forces’ arrival and presence in the region was a wrong, illogical, tension-provoking and crisis-inducing move from the outset, and has always been one of the key contributors to instability and insecurity in the region,” said Qassemi in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry website on December 22.

NA/PA