Anti-Iran Summit in Warsaw a Non-Starter: Zarif

Date: 11 February 2019 - 21:48

News ID: ۶۳۰۲۴

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Days ahead of a summit focused on Iran, the Islamic Republic's Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif has dismissed it as already doomed to fail.
Former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi also warned participants at the Warsaw summit that they cannot "hide" from Tehran.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News last month that Washington would jointly host a global summit focused on the Islamic Republic and the Middle East in Poland in February, but senior U.S. diplomats later toned down and referred to the conference as a gathering assigned to review the security situation in the Middle East, denying that Iran will be at the top of its agenda.
The gathering is scheduled to take place in Warsaw from February 13 to 14.
Speaking to parliament’s website on Sunday, Zarif reiterated that the U.S.-sponsored conference is already a failure since its sponsors are retreating from their initial stance on the event.
Zarif has already labeled the planned forum as a "desperate anti-Iran circus”.
However, senior U.S. officials have pointed out that conference will not have an anti-Iran agenda.
The February 13-14 meeting will include sessions on the situation in Syria and Yemen, missile development, terrorism, illicit finance, and cybersecurity, U.S. and Polish officials have said.
The Islamic Republic is particularly enraged by the fact that Tehran has not been invited to participate in the gathering.
Referring to the fact, Zarif said the conference has failed prior to its kick-off.
Secretary of the Islamic Republic's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani has said the "anti-Tehran" conference indicates that U.S. sanctions against Iran have yielded no results.
"Turning sanctions with utmost pressures into seminars and conferences means that you are empty-handed?," Shamkhani told reporters in Tehran.
Kharrazi, who serves as the chair of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, said Saturday that it was a policy of Washington to try to distort Iran’s image in the eyes of the public in the Middle East so that it could justify its weapons deals with the governments in the region.
"The business of Iranophobia has been created just to impose their policy on some countries in the region and take their money in exchange of supporting for their security,” he said. "There are lots of investment in the region to provoke Iranopphobia and Americans especially are pushing for Iranophobia.”
The senior official said that as a result of Saudi Arabia constantly paying into American coffers for its security, the kingdom’s reserve has been reduced from $750 billion to $300 billion.
"Just by spending their money on nonsense, on useless wars,” said Kharrazi.