Iranian embassy slams Pompeo’s ‘sponsor of terror’ statement as ‘baseless’

The Iranian embassy in New Delhi on Thursday slammed as “baseless” and “unfounded” statements by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New Delhi a day earlier in which he had described the Shia majority country as the “world’s largest state sponsor of terror”.

In its statement, the Iranian embassy said, “These allegations are nothing than continuation of forging unfounded accusations and fabrications by the US Administration specially State Secretary Pompeo to push for more hostilities, instability and confrontation in the region.”

“In following this approach the US is openly sowing seeds of hostility against the peaceful people of Iran through maximum economic pressures in particular unfair sanctions as a brutal act of terrorism,” the statement added.

At a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Pompeo had spoken of the importance of keeping the Straits of Hormuz open for energy trade against the backdrop of tensions between the US and Iran following the former withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing sanctions crippling Iran’s oil economy. It was similar to comments he made in Saudi Arabia earlier in the week when he met King Salman and others – emphasising the need “to promote maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz” and underlining that “freedom of navigation is paramount”.

But Pompeo in his news conference in New Delhi added: “We also know that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, and we know the Indian people, how they have suffered from terror around the world. So I think there is a shared understanding of threat and a common purpose to ensure that we can keep energy at the right prices and deter this threat – not only the threat in the narrow confines of the Middle East, but the threat that this terror regime poses to the entire world.”

In his remarks, foreign minister Jaishankar said that India had a perspective of Iran, given its geographical position close to the country. India had conveyed the importance of global energy supplies remaining “predictable” and “affordable” to Pompeo, he said.

“And I think that’s a concern to which Secretary Pompeo was certainly very, very receptive. I think he understands that this is today the world’s fifth-largest economy, which imports 85 % of its energy, a large part of it, from the Gulf,” Jaishankar said, indicating that New Delhi’s concerns were largely on account of tensions breaking out in the Gulf, where India has approximately 8 million of its people, and due to energy security rather than Iran’s alleged links to terrorism.

The Iranian statement on Thursday said US interventions in the South Asian and Gulf regions had given rise to extremist groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, IS (Islamic State), groups that were “contemporary demonstration of US adventurism”.

In contrast, Iran has been a victim of terrorism, it said, adding that it had lost 17,000 of its citizens partly by being at the forefront of fighting groups like as IS.

Iran was for “peace and stability in the highly sensitive Persian Gulf region and believes that its national security interests can only be secured through dialogue, confidence building and multilateral cooperation within the region”.