Iran on Thursday rejected any and all charges that it might be involved in sponsoring terror organizations around the globe, instead deflecting the criticism by demanding Washington “must stop its state terrorism.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a Twitter message that claims peace loving Iran does not cooperate with the U.S. in fighting terrorism are wrong, according to the semi-official IRNA newsagency.
Mousavi wrote, “With a history of founding, funding & arming different terrorist groups, a record of state terrorism, and its outright support for another terrorist regime, the US is not a good yardstick for measuring anti-terrorism efforts.”
“US must stop its state terrorism.”
He spoke after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran on Wednesday of using its resources to “foment terror” even as its people face the Middle East’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, the Times of Israel reports.
“Even during this pandemic the Iranians are using the ayatollah regime’s resources to foment terror across the world, even when the people of Iran are struggling so mightily,” Pompeo said in Jerusalem ahead of talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It tells you a lot about the soul of those people who lead that country,” he added.
Pompeo said the campaign to rein in Tehran’s regional aggression “has been successful,” but he acknowledged that more can be done.
Iran’s subsequent claims of innocence defy the evidence it is a chief supporter of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
This is not the first time Iran has looked at Washington and called it a threat to global security.
As Breitbart News reported, last November at a chemical weapons conference in The Hague, Iran’s representative denounced the U.S. as a threat to world peace.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Gholam Hossein Dehqani claimed the U.S. is the only country in the world with a chemical stockpile and demanded the U.N. send its watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), to confiscate America’s weapons.
He offered no evidence to back the allegation.
Dehqani also attacked U.S. sanctions against Iran as “economic terrorism” and called on the international community to counteract them.