TEHRAN (AA) - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday reacted to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent remarks about demonstrations in Tehran, saying: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
According to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency, Zarif slammed Washington’s “adventurous” foreign policies despite its own internal problems -- policies, he said, “which will only add to the suffering of the American people”.
“The U.S. government is squandering its citizens’ resources, whether through its adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan, its blind support for Israel and other terror-sponsoring regimes, or its wasteful expansion of its nuclear arsenal,” Zarif tweeted according to Mehr.
“It should surprise no one that protests continued in the U.S. this week: at the [U.S.-Mexico] border, in prisons, and in Washington DC and in all states,” he said.
The Iranian FM added that the U.S. people “demand their leaders share the country’s wealth and respond to their legitimate needs so that 40 million Americans don’t live under the poverty line in the world’s richest nation”.
Zarif also condemned what he described as the U.S. government’s “same futile tactics of suppression, imprisonment of protesters, separation of immigrant families and the incarceration of their children, and the denial of Americans’ grievances”.
The American people, he went on to assert, “are tired of the corruption, injustice and incompetence of their leaders”.
Late Thursday, Pompeo had tweeted that Iranian support for Yemen’s Houthi rebel group “not only enables attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but also risks increasing Yemen's already massive humanitarian crisis”.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added, “must be held accountable for destabilizing the Gulf's security and prolonging the suffering of the Yemeni people”.
The oil-rich Arab Gulf States, led by Saudi Arabia, frequently accuse Iran of “interfering” in other countries’ internal affairs -- allegations denied by Tehran.
On Wednesday, Pompeo had tweeted that the “corrupt regime” in Tehran was “wasting the country’s resources on [Syrian leader Bashar] al-Assad, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, while Iranians struggle”.
Using language that Zarif would later use against him, Pompeo added: “It should surprise no one that Iran protests continue. People are tired of the corruption, injustice and incompetence of their leaders.”
This week, merchants in the Iranian capital reportedly staged demonstrations to protest rising costs of living.
Iran continues to face a host of serious economic challenges, including high unemployment and a weakening currency, due in large part to longstanding U.S. sanctions.