“Dictators, butchers and extremists” backed by the US are leaving the Middle East in ruins, Iran’s foreign minister said, after Donald Trump labeled his country “the world’s leading sponsor of terror” and a “corrupt dictatorship.”

“Iranians – including our Jewish compatriots – are commemorating 40 years of progress despite US pressure, just as Donald Trump again makes accusations against us,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told his Twitter followers, referring to the US president’s attacks on Iran in his 2019 State of the Union address.

US hostility “has led it to support dictators, butchers and extremists, who’ve only brought ruin to our region,” Zarif stated.

Iranians—including our Jewish compatriots—are commemorating 40 yrs of progress despite US pressure, just as @realDonaldTrump again makes accusations against us @ #SOTU2019. US hostility has led it to support dictators, butchers & extremists, who've only brought ruin to our region — Javad Zarif (@JZarif) February 6, 2019

In his second SOTU address, Trump sought to justify recent US actions against Iran. He assured lawmakers that his administration “has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran.”

Going further, Trump said the US had walked out of the “disastrous” Iranian nuclear deal – which was the result of years of talks and a concerted diplomatic effort by five world powers – “to ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons.”

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The US also re-imposed the “toughest ever” sanctions on Iran, targeting its energy and transport sectors. Consequently, Iranian banks were suspended from accessing the global SWIFT financial messaging system.

Zarif’s remarks are in tune with previous comments from Tehran. Just last year, the country’s top diplomat told his French counterpart that the US and its allies “have turned our region into a gunpowder depot by selling arms.”

Later, the foreign minister issued the same message to Europe. “[The] US and Europeans should stop pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons into our region instead of questioning Iran’s missiles,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.

READ MORE: Weapons ending up with terrorists is OK, as long as Obama did it: The world according to CNN

Washington has a large pool of allies in the Middle East, mainly among the oil-rich Gulf monarchies. Some of them are involved in the lingering civil war in Yemen, which has pushed the country to the brink of famine, while others are constantly blamed by international NGOs for human rights abuses and for silencing political dissent.

That aside, the US has been fueling the Syrian war by continuously supplying opposition groups with arms, some of which eventually made their way into the hands of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists and other extremist groups.





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