Iranian foreign minister’s comments come after Rex Tillerson accused Tehran of following in the footsteps of North Korea

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad-Javad Zarif, has criticised the US after his counterpart, Rex Tillerson, said Tehran was creating “alarming and ongoing provocations” to destabilise countries in the Middle East.



Tillerson told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that the US was conducting a government-wide review of its Iran policy. He also called the landmark nuclear deal in 2015 a failure and accused Tehran of following in the footsteps of North Korea.

Tillerson’s remarks contrasted with a letter he wrote to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, on Tuesday in which he confirmed Iran was upholding its commitments under the deal, known as the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA).

Zarif, a close ally of Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, tweeted:

In a statement released a few hours later, Zarif accused the US of attempting to distract attention away from its “abysmal” human rights record, in particular Donald Trump’s attempted ban on immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries and America’s support for Israel, which Zarif claimed has an “illegal” nuclear arsenal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad-Zarif. Photograph: Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images

Tillerson’s accusations of Iranian provocation come amid an increasingly bitter row between the US and North Korea. On Thursday, North Korean state media warned the US of a “super-mighty preemptive strike” after Tillerson said on Wednesday he was “reviewing all the status of North Korea, both in terms of state sponsorship of terrorism as well as the other ways in which we can bring pressure on the regime in Pyongyang”.

The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling Workers’ party, said: “In the case of our super-mighty preemptive strike being launched, it will completely and immediately wipe out not only US imperialists’ invasion forces in South Korea and its surrounding areas but the US mainland and reduce them to ashes.”

Tillerson said “an unchecked Iran has the potential to travel the same path as North Korea” and that the nuclear deal had failed to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in the future.

“It only delays their goal of becoming a nuclear state”, he said. “The Trump administration has no intention of passing the buck to a future administration on Iran.”

Tillerson said it was a mistake that “other serious threats that Iran poses” were ignored in the nuclear negotiations in 2015. Trump has previously criticised his predecessor, Barack Obama, for what he termed a disastrous deal. He promised to dismantle it, but he has yet to take concrete steps to do so.

The Iran nuclear deal is a success – and the whole world is safer for it | Federica Mogherini Read more

Under the agreement struck in Vienna in 2015, Iran rolled back its nuclear programme, reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium and removing thousands of centrifuges and the core of the heavy water reactor in Arak.

In return, the US and EU ended all related economic sanctions on Iran in January 2016 after the UN nuclear agency confirmed the country had fulfilled its obligations. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest assessment, Iran is still keeping to its commitments, but Tehran complains that it has not been able to fully reconnect to the global banking system.

All eyes are now on whether Trump will sign waivers to extend sanctions relief in mid-May, an important moment that would determine his administration’s real commitment to the deal.

Analysts believe he will not scrap the deal, but will instead adopt a more rigorous implementation of the agreement and tighten sanctions already in place. This could force Iran to violate first or make the deal redundant.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which supports the deal, said Tillerson’s remarks were incendiary. “Public statements lambasting the nuclear deal with Iran as a ‘failed approach’ and comparing the country with North Korea are reckless and blatantly false,” the group said.

“This comes just one day after Secretary Tillerson acknowledged that Iran was complying with the terms of the nuclear deal. Such ambivalent policy positions have come to define this administration.”

Tillerson said in his 18 April letter to Ryan that Trump had directed a review of JCPOA to establish whether suspending sanctions on Iran was vital to US national security interests. His comments a day later implied that the review was not limited to the nuclear deal and would include Washington’s overall Iran policy.

The NIAC said Tillerson’s remarks amounted to a “an extreme departure” from the views shared by the US’s traditional allies, such as France, Germany and Britain, and that they would play into the hands of hardliners in Iran, who adamantly oppose their moderate counterparts who negotiated the deal.

“Secretary Tillerson followed these remarks by saying that the Trump administration will not ‘pass the buck’ of a nuclear Iran to the next administration,” the NIAC said.

“There is little room to interpret this statement as anything less than a proclamation of the Trump administration’s intent to scrap the nuclear deal and reset the United States on a path to war.”

Tillerson’s comments about Iran as a disruptive force in the region came as he praised Saudi Arabia on the day that the US defence secretary, James Mattis, was visiting Riyadh. Mattis echoed Tillerson in the Saudi capital, speaking about Iran’s “destablising” influence, particularly in Yemen.

“Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and is responsible for intensifying multiple conflicts and undermining US interests in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, and continuing to support attacks against Israel,” Tillerson said.

The US has backed Saudi Arabia in its military intervention in Yemen, which aims to reinstate the ousted president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and counter the advances of Houthi rebels, which it claims are backed militarily by Iran. Tehran vehemently denies the charge.

Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, tweeted: