Hariri to Iran: All pretexts have fallen, and the story has become too clear to be told

The following statement was issued by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri:

“All pretexts have fallen, and the story has become too clear to be told and too explicit to be argued over.

Iran justified its previous aggression against the Gulf states with the flimsy pretext that the American attacks had been launched from their territory. Yet the denials were clear, and the Gulf states had issued explicit positions before the war rejecting the use of their lands as a launchpad or corridor for any attack on Iran. Nevertheless, the propaganda machine in Tehran and among its axis kept repeating the same narrative, as though repetition could grant it the credibility it lacked from the outset.

But what happened yesterday left no room for a new illusion. The narrative collapsed, and the scene appeared in its true form.

It was direct aggression without masks, without preambles, and without any need for pretexts. A single approach to Iranian policy has emerged, one defined by aggression. It is an approach that no longer hides behind rhetoric or justification, and its objective is plainly and scandalously clear: to impose power through a logic of intimidation that sees the neighborhood as nothing more than an open arena for violation.

The attack on the UAE was not a passing event, but a clear message targeting the civilizational and political antithesis of the Iranian regime. It was a blatant attempt to strike at a model that chose construction over destruction, openness where windows were shut, and thus succeeded where failures have piled up in the records of the Tehran regime.

The Emirati model has long stood as a mirror reflecting, day after day, the story of the failure of the Iranian regime’s adventures—adventures whose cost has been borne by its own people, draining wealth and eroding opportunities.

With the collapse of the pretexts, the narratives have receded, and nothing remains but a stark reality called aggression, headed by intimidation, and at its core a long record stretching from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Yemen to the Gulf and beyond. It is a record full of blackmail, threats, shelling, bombings, and the unchecked planting of militias, with no restraint from law and no regard for the principles of good neighborliness.

In this scene, the truth needs no embellishment, and language can no longer bear further evasion. When the picture is exposed to this extent, words become nothing more than a description of what already exists—dark and grim.

What is happening is not an isolated incident, but an ongoing approach that no justifications have succeeded in concealing, and whose narratives no longer convince anyone, least of all those who have paid its price at home before abroad.

It is an approach of draining wealth and squandering the legacy of a great people, in addition to destroying their present and confiscating their future, then using them and their causes as fuel for aggression against their surroundings and the world.”