A senior Pakistani lawmaker said on Sunday history is full of “U.S. strategic blunders” and Washington “must realize it cannot blackmail other countries for its own strategic interests.”
Senator Lieutenant General (retd) Abdul Qayyum made his attack on U.S. foreign policy during an interview with the Iran Republic News Agency (IRNA) where he also excoriated current U.S. trade sanction policies.
Qayyum said Americans went to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan but “all of their actions proved to be strategic blunders.”
He then pointed to U.S. sanctions against Iran.
“The U.S. must not use international monitory institutions to pressurize other states and strangulate them economically,” he said, in reference to SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication).
The Trump administration has cut off the SWIFT link of the Iranian banking system as part of its general crackdown on trade with Tehran.
Pakistan has received billions of U.S. dollars in aid over the past decade, something previously noted by President Donald Trump.
In January, 2018, Trump attacked Pakistan’s lack of action against the terrorists groups he said were harbored in its midst.
Trump also accused Pakistan of giving “safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror.”
“We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond,” the president said. “These killers need to know they have nowhere to hide – that no place is beyond the reach of American arms.”
The Trump administration withheld $50 million in military aid to Pakistan last year because it felt Islamabad was not doing enough to bring down the Taliban and the Haqqani Network.
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