Iran on Thursday denied remarks attributed to the country's chief diplomat by the Saudi ambassador to the United States and criticized the kingdom's desperate attempts to exert psychological pressure on Tehran.
"Desperate efforts to create discord and doubt and continuing the psychological warfare by anti-Iran centers with the aim of undermining national cohesion and unity among the government, the nation and state officials is not what the novice Saudi ambassador can count on," the public relations department of the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by IRNA.
In an opinion piece published on July 23 in the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, Khalid bin Salman claimed that he has heard directly from a former US government official that Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif whispers privately that Washington needs to back Iran so the moderates can take over.
The Foreign Ministry statement called the allegations "ridiculous", saying that the people know their committed officials well and do not attach significance to such lies and threadbare tactics of the so-called "think tanks" and propagated by anti-Iran media outlets.
The Saudi envoy also leveled other accusations against Iran in his article, urging the world to confront the country's "malign" behavior instead of approaching it with the sort of appeasement policies that have failed in the past.
