Mike Pompeo has clashed online with Tehran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after the latter weighed in on the anti-police-brutality riots across the US. Zarif even used the secretary of state’s own words on Iran.
“Some don’t think Black Lives Matter,” Zarif wrote, telling “those of us who do” that a war waged against racism is “long overdue for the entire world.” The top Iranian official was commenting on the mayhem sweeping through the US over the police killing of an African American, George Floyd.
It is “time for #WorldAgainstRacism,” Zarif’s statement proclaimed. It also featured a re-write of a previous statement by Secretary of State Pompeo, which lambasted Iran for allegedly “squandering its citizens' resources” and employing “futile tactics of suppression, imprisonment of protesters” along with “the denial of Iranian frustrations.”
Zarif replaced the words “Iran” and “Iranian” with “American,” “America” or “US” in the repurposed statement. He was apparently applying the comment in relation to what is happening now across the United States.
Zarif’s publication appeared on Pompeo’s radar hours later, but the response of the State Department chief was unusually brief. “You hang homosexuals, stone women and exterminate Jews,” he wrote, sharing the Iranian foreign minister’s tweet.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry is no stranger to sparring with the US secretary of state. Earlier in March, it uploaded an image that called for an end to “aiding war crimes” and “obeying immoral and illegal US sanctions.”
The picture featured the word “sanction” in the center, with the letter “O” stylized as coronavirus with a translucent Pompeo lurking behind it. The unorthodox message came after the US chief diplomat blamed Tehran for the severity of the outbreak in the country.
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