As a war of words between the United States and Iran has begun, the hostile Islamic Republic has begun to take full advantage of the divided United States struggles to handle its instability.
An Iranian official accused Washington of institutional racism after the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day resulted in nationwide riots and protests. Iran and the United States have recently engaged in a war of words on Friday, as U.S. Special Envoy to Iran, Brian Hook, blasted the nation for using its diplomats to conduct assassinations and terrorist attacks, as well as conducting more than 360 assassinations, terrorist plots, and terrorist attacks in more than forty countries on five continents across the globe.
“Some don’t think #BlackLivesMatter,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter. “To those of us who do: it is long overdue for the entire world to wage war against racism. Time for a #WorldAgainstRacism.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded in full force on Twitter, calling the nation out for its killing of Jews, women and homosexuals.
“You hang homosexuals, stone women and exterminate Jews,” Pompeo wrote.
You hang homosexuals, stone women and exterminate Jews. pic.twitter.com/eip0bu8RIL
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) May 30, 2020
In an interview the day before Zarif made his comments, Hook criticized Iran of being a “Marxist theocracy” responsible for a major portion of the world’s acts of terrorism.
“Iran’s diplomats are agents of terror, and they conducted multiple assassinations and bomb plots all over the world. They conducted acts of terrorism on five continents,” Hook said, adding later that the rest of the world was on the United States side.
“I do not think anybody’s happy with the regime’s regional aggression and hostage-taking. And you have seen European nations, especially the permanent members of the UN Security Council, France, and the United Kingdom, repeatedly condemn Iran for terrorism, ballistic missile testing, missile proliferation, terror finance, and money laundering,” he said.
The United States has taken a stronger stance against the Iranian regime under President Donald Trump and has implemented a number of sanctions against the nation since 2017. The European Union demonstrated its support for the United States by following it to a lesser degree and implementing its own sanctions on Iran, too, according to Hook.
“The European Union imposed sanctions on Iran’s intelligence service, because of the assassination attempts and bomb plots in Europe,” Hook said. “I wish the European Union would also put sanctions on what Iran is doing inside the Middle East. But if you look at the time this regime came to power in 1979, it has been implicated in assassinations and other terrorist plots in more than forty countries. That’s just extraordinary.”
Hook also said the sanctions against Iran were working, making the hostile nation weaker, poorer, and further away from developing a nuclear weapon then under previous administrations.
“Iran doesn’t have the money anymore that it used to, to keep its proxies rich and to keep the regime’s elite rich. So, we have been able to affect a change in the regime’s behavior simply by denying its revenue. And we have amassed a lot of leverage against the regime, and that leverage is going to be necessary to accomplish the kind of deal we’re talking about. We need to get to zero enrichment. Countries that want peaceful nuclear power do not need to enrich,” he said.
