Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said on Thursday that Washington should be held responsible for “crimes against humanity,” dismissing his US counterpart’s claim that the leadership in Tehran is to blame for the challenges facing Iranians and Yemenis.
“[The] US is accountable for crimes against humanity re Iran & Yemen,” Zarif wrote on his official Twitter account, in reference to America’s anti-Iran sanctions and its support for the Saudi-led military coalition against war-torn Yemen.
In an interview with BBC Persian on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of arming Yemen’s Houthi group—a charge Tehran denies—and said the challenge in the Arab country is “in large part the responsibility of the Iranian leadership.”
“Iran causes death and destruction inside of Yemen and does nothing to prevent the starvation, and the Saudis provide millions and millions of dollars—as do the Emiratis—to mitigate this risk and this harm,” the chief US diplomat claimed.
In response, Zarif tweeted, “You know what @SecPompeo? It’s the Yemenis themselves who’re responsible for famine they’re facing. They should’ve simply allowed your butcher clients—who spend billions on bombing school buses & ‘millions to mitigate this risk’—to annihilate them w/o resisting.”
According to the United Nations, half the population of Yemen—some 14 million people—could soon be on the brink of famine and completely relying on humanitarian aid for survival.
Pompeo also said in the interview that Iranian authorities have to “make a decision that they want their people to eat. They have to make a decision that they want to use their wealth to import medicine”.
Zarif responded with a tweet, saying, “Just as with Yemen, @SecPompeo blames Iran for unlawful US sanctions preventing Iranians’ access to financial services for food and medicine. Naturally, we will provide them for our people in spite of US efforts.”
When asked about facts and investigations showing that US financial restrictions on Iran are affecting imports of food and medicine, the US secretary of state claimed that it is not his country’s “intention” to restrict such access.
“Indeed, there are big exemptions for medicine for sure, pharmaceuticals, but also more broadly than that for agricultural imports too so that the Iranian people have foodstuffs as well,” he contended.
Although humanitarian products like medicines are exempt from sanctions, in practice supplies have been disrupted because banks and companies are wary of doing business with Tehran.
Hypocritical Claims
Separately, Iran's foreign minister said in a video message on Tuesday that the US economic warfare directly targets the Iranian people despite “hypocritical claims” by the administration of US President Donald Trump to the contrary.
“The US administration appears to believe that imposing draconian sanctions on Iran will bring about such pain to our nation that it will force us to submit to its will,” Zarif said in the message, posted in English and Persian.
“We have weathered difficult times in the face of 40 years of American hostility relying solely on our own resources,” he added, dismissing US sanctions and Washington’s demands of change from Tehran as “absurd, unlawful and fundamentally flawed”.
“Today, we and our partners across the globe will ensure that our people are least affected by this indiscriminate assault.”
Zarif noted that Washington’s decision to scrap the multi-national nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions was “pushing it further into global isolation”.
“President Trump’s predecessors also began crafting their Iran policy with similar bravado but came around to accepting and respecting the reality of Iran as they became more experienced in office,” he said.
The United States would be better off rethinking its “unconditional support” for Saudi Arabia and Israel that has “blinded the US to their appalling atrocities”, the top diplomat said.
The Persian version said the US “will regret this unwise move” and emphasized that the sanctions were aimed at “separating people from each other and from the establishment”.
In an interview with ICANA published on Friday, Zarif said Iran will continue its negotiations with Europe to keep the nuclear deal alive.
INTRO (1): “Today, we and our partners across the globe will ensure that our people are least affected by this indiscriminate assault,” Zarif said, in reference to US sanctions
INTRO (2): “President Trump’s predecessors also began crafting their Iran policy with similar bravado but came around to accepting and respecting the reality of Iran as they became more experienced in office”
CAPTION: Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif
