TEHRAN- Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday that the United Arab Emirates cannot become more secure through buying security from Israel, according to a Press TV report.

“The United Arab Emirates has turned to Israel to buy security, while Israel is unable to keep even itself secure,” Iran’s chief diplomat said in a speech delivered at the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran, the fifth and final part of a five-part course in international relations entitled, “World in Transition.”

Zarif’s remarks come after the UAE and Israel reached a peace deal that will lead to full normalization of diplomatic relations between the two sides. Under the deal, which was brokered by the U.S., Israel agreed to suspend its plans to annex large swaths of the West Bank.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the UAE-Israel, saying it was a “strategic folly” that will only end up strengthening the regional resistance front.

“Undoubtedly, the agreement will result in fortification of the resistance axis in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.

“History will reveal how this strategic mistake by the Zionist regime and this act of backstabbing by the Emirates against the Palestinians and, by extension, the entire Muslim community, will conversely result in fortifying the resistance axis,” the ministry added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian foreign minister said regional countries should realize and accept that they cannot purchase security, but it should be established by regional states.

"You cannot be secure if your neighbors are not secure …We should understand that we can compete with each other, but cannot dominate or delete each other," Zarif underlined.

He said neighboring countries live closely together and have no other option, adding, "No one can be crossed out from the region, but foreign powers can be expelled.”

He emphasized that countries in the Middle East region are spending the highest amount of money on the purchase of arms, noting that the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council's member states allocated some 116 billion dollars to buying lethal weapons in 2017.  

The Iranian foreign minister added that Saudi Arabia is the world's third-largest arms importer after the United States and China, saying, "We, in the Middle East, are in need of a powerful region rather than a powerful individual."