Zarif to Trump: Respect, Not Threats, Works With Iran

EghtesadOnline: Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif called on US President Donald Trump to try respect rather than threats in its approach to Iran.

News ID: ۷۴۷۳۹۱

21 May 2019

“#NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect—it works!” he wrote on his Twitter account on Monday.

He posted the tweet in response to Trump's recent tweet: "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!"

Zarif stressed in his statement that the hostile measures the US president is being lured to take by some hawkish figures surrounding him will not end Iran, Financial Tribune reported.

"Goaded by #B_Team, @realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone. #EconomicTerrorism & genocidal taunts won't 'end Iran'."

By “B Team”, Zarif refers to Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE (aka Bins).

Trump’s tweet came after a rocket was fired into the Iraqi capital Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and diplomatic missions, on Sunday night, falling near the US Embassy but causing no casualties.

A US State Department official noted that there had so far been no claim of responsibility, and that no US-inhabited facility was impacted, Reuters reported.

“But, we take this incident very seriously,” the official said. “We will hold Iran responsible if any such attacks are conducted by its proxy militia forces or elements of such forces, and will respond to Iran accordingly.”

The Iraqi military said the Katyusha rocket fell in the middle of the Green Zone, near the Monument of the Unknown Soldier. The monument lies in open ground about half a kilometer north of the sprawling, riverside US Embassy compound.

The embassy in Baghdad and US Consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Erbil has already evacuated non-emergency staff, out of apparent concern about perceived threats from Iran.

Iran’s Iraqi allies rushed to condemn the attack and stressed that a war between Tehran and Washington would be bad for Baghdad and the whole region.

Militia leader and politician, Hadi al-Ameri, whose electoral block holds the second largest number of seats in Iraqi Parliament, urged Iraqis in a statement overnight “not to be the fire that fuels this war” that would “burn everyone”.

His sentiment was echoed by Qais al-Khazali, another prominent Iran-backed militia leader, who tweeted that a war would be neither in Washington’s nor in Tehran’s interests.