Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said Sunday that the U.S. State Department's new Iran Action Group was trying to overthrow the Islamic republic, but it would fail.
Last Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named senior policy adviser Brian Hook as head of the new group, which has been charged with coordinating the Trump administration's pressure campaign against Iran in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 international nuclear deal and the reimposition of sanctions on Iran.
Speaking on the 65th anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew democratically elected nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh – an anniversary when anti-American sentiment in Iran runs particularly high – Zarif compared the latest U.S. sanctions to the 1953 coup and declared that Iran will not allow history to repeat itself.
"Sixty-five years ago today, the U.S. overthrew the popularly elected democratic government of Dr. Mossadegh, restoring the dictatorship and subjugating Iranians for the next 25 years. Now an 'Action Group' dreams of doing the same through pressure, misinformation and demagoguery. Never again," Zarif tweeted.
The United States and Britain orchestrated Mossadegh's removal after he acted to nationalize Iran's oil industry, restoring Western-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power. The shah was toppled in Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the coup was the best historical lesson proving that Americans cannot be trusted.
"How dare you talk about the freedom of the Iranian nation with your dark record of the Aug. 19 coup and the appointment of a puppet totalitarian regime [the shah]," Larijani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.
"Americans are imposing sanctions but they claim they are supporting freedom, human rights, and global and regional security," he said.
The coup remains an open wound in Iran's relations with the West. In March 2000, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first senior U.S. official to acknowledge the American role in the coup, calling it "a setback for Iran's political development."
The U.S. and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the shah's fall. Decades of hostility eased somewhat with the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, with the U.S. then led by President Barack Obama. But high tensions resumed after President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal, calling it flawed in Iran's favor.
