"It is truly regrettable that he cannot make the most basic judgment," the South Korean News Agency of Yonhap quoted the opposition leader on Wednesday as saying at a council meeting.
On Tuesday (January 17), the Yonhap report said South Korea was seeking to defuse controversy over the remarks in which Yoon had compared the UAE-Iran relations to that of South Korea and North Korea by saying that the UAE's “enemy and biggest threat is Iran.”
“Through a monocellular and biased diplomacy based on the notion that 'a friend's enemy is my enemy', you cannot properly guard the people and national interest," the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) said while criticizing the president for his remarks.
As Yonhap quoted Lee, "very wrong and thoughtless remarks" have put the UAE in a difficult position and provoked Iran, voicing concern that it may adversely affect Korean residents in the country as well as South Korean vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
In response to Yeol’s remarks, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani said late on Monday that the comments showed that the South Korean official was completely unaware of historical and friendly relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Persian Gulf littoral states, including the UAE.
As Kanaani noted, the Iranian Foreign Ministry is looking into and pursuing the meddling comments by Yoon and is waiting for an explanation from Seoul.
In a related development, the official Yonhap news agency in a text message issued to reporters on Tuesday announced that the South Korean Foreign Ministry has said Yoon’s remarks about Iran were “irrelevant” to Seoul's relations with Tehran.
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