WASHINGTON, July 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that the Iranian regime declined his offer to travel to the country and speak to its people.
In a tweet, he said: “I recently offered to travel to Tehran and speak directly to the Iranian people. The regime hasn’t accepted my offer.”
He added: “We aren’t afraid of @JZarif [Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif] coming to America where he enjoys the right to speak freely. Are the facts of the @khamenei_ir [Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei] regime so bad he cannot let me do the same thing in Tehran? What if his people heard the truth, unfiltered, unabridged?”
In an interview, he added that Mr Zarif had the chance to speak to the American public and “put Iranian propaganda out into the American air waves”.
Mr Zarif visited New York earlier this month for a UN meeting, giving several interviews with US broadcasters.
Commenting on visiting Iran, Mr Pompeo added that he would go there “not to spread propaganda”, but to “speak the truth to the Iranian people about what it is the leadership has done and how it has harmed Iran.”
He believed the reason why he had not been permitted to go was because the Iranian regime “know the truth as well”.
The news comes as diplomats from countries that signed the 2015 nuclear deal met in Vienna on Sunday, in an attempt to salvage the agreement. The United States withdrew from the agreement last year, damaging relations between Tehran and Washington.
Iranian official Abbas Araqchi called the meeting “constructive”, but said there were a lot of issues left unresolved.
Tensions between Iran and the West have escalated in recent months, following several attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf, as well as the seizure of vessels.
The US said it brought down one and possibly two Iranian drones this month, and blamed Tehran for a series of attacks on tanker ships.
Iran shot down an unmanned US aircraft in June, after which US President Donald Trump announced that he had called off retaliatory air strikes at the last minute because the resulting death toll would have been too high.
Tehran has also been in dispute with Britain, seizing its oil tanker Steno Impero and its 23-member crew in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this month. The move was seen as a tit-for-tat response to the British Navy seizing an Iranian vessel that was carrying 2.1 billion barrels of oil to Syria on June 4. Britain said Tehran’s move was a violation of EU sanctions and the ship remains in Gibraltar.
Iran also made it public in June that it was openly exceeding the uranium enrichment levels agreed in the nuclear deal, concerning the EU and the US.
Both the UK and the US have increased their military presence in the Gulf in response to the escalating tensions with Tehran.
NNN-AGENCIES
