National security adviser John Bolton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took shots at one another in back-to-back interviews on the topic of regime change in Iran.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Zarif discussed a group of countries and officials are pushing the United States to spur a conflict with Tehran. Among them, he said, are Bolton, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
“At least. They want — they have all shown an interest in dragging the United States into a conflict,” Zarif said. “I do not believe that President Trump wants to do that, I believe President Trump ran on a campaign promise of not bringing the United States into another war.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif tells Chris a group of U.S. and Mideast officials are trying to drag the U.S. into conflict with Iran. Watch the full interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday.
Check your local lisitings, 2P/7P on @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/8hgVIanKWS— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) April 26, 2019
Bolton, an Iran hawk, also was a guest on the show and was asked to respond to Zarif’s claim that the U.S. is trying to “foment” a conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
“It’s completely ridiculous. I think what that interview showed was a carefully prepared propaganda script by the Iranians,” Bolton said. “This is their effort to try and sow disinformation and the American body politic. The fact is the president’s policy on Iran has been clear well before I arrived in the administration. It is to put maximum pressure on the regime to get it to change its behavior. And I think it’s working and I think that’s what they’re worried about.”
The U.S. announced this month that it would stop granting exemptions to countries that import Iranian oil. Countries that persist in buying oil from Iran will face U.S. sanctions. The Trump administration also designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a foreign terrorist organization, escalating tension in the region and leading Iran to label the entire U.S. military as “terrorists.”
Zarif told host Chris Wallace these hardball tactics would not succeed.
“I believe President Trump’s intention to put pressure, the policy of maximum pressure, on Iran in order to bring Iran to its knees so that we would succumb to pressure is doomed to failure,” Zarif said.
