US actions have been “confrontational” and “provocative” but Iran is not seeking war, Zarif told CNN after Trump threatened Iran with obliteration on Twitter.
“I think President Trump should remember that we don’t live in the 18th century. There is a United Nations charter, and threat of wars is illegal,” Zarif said.
Amid escalating tensions between the Trump administration and Tehran after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) shot down an intruding US spy drone over Iran’s territorial waters, the US president warned Tuesday that any subsequent attack Iran might carry out on “anything American” would be met with “great and overwhelming force.”
“In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration,” Trump tweeted.
Zarif said the US administration was “trying to undermine the Iranian government” and “walked into it based on a wrong analysis.”
Trump has received “wrong information, wrong analysis, and now President Trump finds himself in a situation where he believes that he needs to get out.”
The foreign minister called the sanctions “an additional insult by the United States against the entire Iranian nation.”
