TEL AVIV – The Saudi daily Al-Riyadh published a column on Tuesday urging Arabs to accept that Iran, and not Israel, is the real enemy.

Musaid Al-Asimi called on fellow Saudis to acknowledge that Iran poses a real threat to Saudi Arabia and not Israel, and that everything must be done to defeat it.

That said, Asimi does not mince his words regarding Israel.

“With respect to the Israeli hostility, no reasonable person has any doubt that Israel is a gang that steals Arab land, and that it has done so with international support, beginning with the Balfour Declaration and continuing with the U.S. support provided to it to this day,” he writes in the article translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“However, the description of this hostility is exaggerated, to the extent that there are those who claimed that the aspirations of the Jews extend to the south of the Arabian Peninsula,” he added.

Asimi writes that Arab gullibility led them to believe in these Jewish “aspirations,” resulting in “great hysteria” and enormous donations to the Palestinians that “exceeded the budgets of some large countries.”

“Who, then, is the enemy? Who is it that I should watch out for and beware of?” writes Asimi.

According to Asimi, real enemies harm you, dupe you with weapons and money and invent conflict during the time of the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).

“The issue is crystal clear and the enemy is out in the open,” he writes, adding that there is no greater adversary than Iran.

“Does Israel threaten, influence, or worry [us], or disseminate resentment and hatred like Iran does?”

He concludes by calling out Qatar for being duplicitous in its dealings with Iran, saying “the friend of my enemy is [also] my enemy, even if he is an Arab from the Gulf.”