Israel-Iran war: Museveni blames historical 'mistake-makers' for conflict

KAMPALA - Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, who is also the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) chairperson, has today, June 24, 2025, spoken out on the Israel-Iran war, blaming historical mistakes. 

Museveni, in a statement posted on his X, formerly Twitter, handle, says the conflict is etched in historical mistakes by Western imperialists, Romans, Iranians, Israelis and the British colonial masters.

He was responding to a complaint by the Iranian Ambassador to Uganda as to why NAM has not commented on the tragic situation in the Middle East.

The President says Iran's stand that 'Israel is a "transplant" in the Middle East and does not belong there legitimately is a mistake because, according to the Bible, Israel is part of that area.

He condemns British imperialists' 1924 attempt to offer the Jews Uganda as a homeland, 'Imagine the absurdity', and says the United Nations was right to partition Palestine between two people.

"It has been wrong for some of the Arabs and Iranian Islamists to refuse to recognise that historical solution," part of the statement reads.

Museveni also wonders why the Israelis have refused a two-state solution to the endemic conflict they have with Palestinians: Why have they refused the implementation of the two-state solution? It is not correct for them to say that the Palestinians do not belong there. Whenever I would meet Mzee Benzion Netanyahu, Netanyahu's father, I would ask him about the 7 tribes of Canaan that we read about in the Bible -the Jebusites, etc.

What happened to them? How about the Philistines of Gaza? Even if you assume that all those People perished, there are People who migrated into the area when the Romans dispersed the Jews in AD 70. You cannot say that they do not belong there. If you say that, then what would you say about the Europeans who migrated to the Americas, Australia, South Africa, etc, in just the last 400 years?

This is, indeed, what Idi Amin was saying when he expelled our Indians that they did not belong to Uganda. We rejected that logic.

Western imperialists, according to Museveni, led by CIA, are responsible for the confusion because, in 1953, they overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, because they wanted to steal the oil of Iran.

"It is them who created that huge resentment that produced these clerics who have their own mistaken positions. I was, indeed, amazed that they did not even know well the history of their own Country. Imagine, me Yoweri Museveni of the Great Lakes of Africa, from the Bible, I had heard repeated references to the "Persians and Medians", whose laws "do not change".

Below is a detailed statement: