Iran: Pompeo offer to visit Tehran a ‘hypocritical gesture’

Iran has reportedly called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s offer to visit Tehran a “hypocritical gesture.”

{mosads}Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Wednesday in comments directed at Pompeo, “You don’t need to come to Iran,” according to The Associated Press. 

Speaking from a Cabinet meeting, Zarif said that Pompeo should rather allow Iranian reporters to obtain visas to go to the U.S. and interview him, saying that Pompeo rejected their attempts to get visas. 

His statements follow a recent tweet by Pompeo in which the secretary of State offered to visit Tehran and address the Iranian people.

“We aren’t afraid of [Zarif] coming to America where he enjoys the right to speak freely,” Pompeo tweeted.

“Are the facts of the [Khamenei] regime so bad he cannot let me do the same thing in Tehran?” he said, referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “What if his people heard the truth, unfiltered, unabridged?”

We aren’t afraid of @JZarif coming to America where he enjoys the right to speak freely. Are the facts of the @khamenei_ir regime so bad he cannot let me do the same thing in Tehran? What if his people heard the truth, unfiltered, unabridged?

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) July 28, 2019

Relations between the two countries have remained tense since President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year.

Earlier this month, Trump said that the U.S. shot down an Iranian drone in a “defensive action.” The incident came after Iran last month shot down a U.S. surveillance drone that it claimed was flying over Iranian airspace, a move that nearly prompted a retaliatory strike from the U.S.

Iran in recent weeks exceeded the uranium stockpile and enrichment levels agreed to in that deal.